Roland swapped over to A, giving them relief from the Consul as some of the people fighting A swapped to dealing with D. Mostly those with holy power to deal with the Consul. Well, A was more up Roland's alley anyway. A creature using flesh and other horrid, unspeakable things to attack. There were far more people like this in the City than bloodfiends. Although Roland would soon find that A was a really bad opponent for him to face as he attacked the mind more than anything.
A's attacks, at least the physical ones, Roland could clash with and overcome. Unlike D, A didn't have monsterous strength. Well, not AS monstrous. His stress attacks though, Roland had a lot of issues dealing with. They were clearly his stronger attacks, and Roland had a bit of a weakness to these kind of attacks making them even more effective on him. He had to close this battle quick, and at emotion level 5, he had the tools to at least give that an attempt.
Donning the EGO of Road Home, Roland wore a dapper suit and with a snap of his fingers a moderately sized farmhouse fell from the sky and landed on A as he was trying to do his Puncture attack, overpowering it and crashing down upon A for a fair amount of damage. Using the damage boost offered by this attack, Roland went in with a massive mana powered swing from his massive sword in an attempt to put in as much damage as he could as he got ready to do Furioso. He also threw one of his spectres at A to deal more damage with the Consul sadly being immune to the silence portion of the ability.
Blazermate healed up those that were low, most of them being involved with the Gravemind. Speaking of said Gravemind, it seemed she was now helping deal with that enemy now. A strong enemy that she had only a few things she could do to help pile on the damage. First she summoned the Engineer, who thanks to the rubble of O's attractions, had more metal than normal and could quickly build up his sentry gun to level 2 and then 3 without needing to wait for dispenser metal. Blazermate herself throwing out a holy bolt to deal some damage and heal everyone it passed by; this notably being her only real AoE heal.
She had a few other things ready, building up another Ubercharge to use on someone soon, who to use it on though...
Roland had been fighting D, although mostly to a standstill now. He had already activated the condition needed for his Decaying Explosion, Sentinel Satellite, and gained Emotion level 4, gaining Emerald, a scheming woman's voice saying "I’ll make your wishes come true. What do you wish for?", and also gaining the EGO False Throne. Much like a few others, the machinations of O and his roller coaster wasn't missed. Although being stuck in combat with D, Roland couldn't offer much to that situation other than to be wary of a roller coaster being built around himself or something.
Combat with D has been mixed so far. As Roland had been gaining power from his allies and emotion level D had been progressively stepping up his attacks. From just sitting firing stronger projectiles, to using his claws to deflect Roland's bullets, to now standing up and using a flaming scythe to clash and fight all those attacking him while throwing meteors about. At least now Roland had started to get going and could now use his speed to start dodging these projectiles instead of attacking them. Especially since a lot of them tended to just... stall him and being stalled when meteors are flying towards you was a bad, bad idea.
A few more clashes, a few more hits, and a heal out of nowhere thanks to Jr. And Roland finally hit his max emotion level, emotion level 5 and gained Powder of Life, a sad woman's voice saying "Here, child… I’ll give you new life.", giving every ally on the battlefield the ability to ignore one lethal hit and get healed for a fair amount. As well as the EGO The Homing Instinct. Roland noted that the scythe D was using was sorta similar to the scythe the blue sicko used, although a lot more gothic in nature and with much slower swings. Still, that didn't make it any less powerful.
Blazermate meanwhile found herself drifting towards the D group. Having been hovering around O, she had been too far away to help Sectonia when she got comboed by a roller coaster. Although, she didn't know that'd even happen since O just DID things and it happened. Nor that it'd chunk her health as fast as it did considering it had only been slowly going down while dealing with the Gravemind who seemed to do way, way more damage due to its size. But that was what a Consul did. She'd be much more worried if she didn't know Ace had something for this, but it would be best that its not used in the first place.
With D and the guardian close to each other, Blazermate could start healing those people now with O having seemingly disappeared, only to reappear in some giant building of sorts? A relief to people like Roland, Ace, and others who had taken some big hit so far. Soon she'd need to turn her attention to the group attacking A, but so far it seemed they were mostly fine. Exhausted but... Well they were fine until Edward got hit pretty hard by the Gravemind. Seriously how tanky was that thing? Wait... looking at it, Blazermate got an idea, although she'd need a fast partner like Roland or Capt to really make use of it.
Thanks to O's ability to just spawn things out of nowhere, it was one of the few things that got around Blazermate's Scan ability. Mostly because these things didn't exist before hand, then suddenly wham! crocodile twice your size is grabbing your leg and dragging you underwater! There was something Blazermate had for this, and that was using Disruption on the giant croc before it could do anything worse to her, banishing it and freeing her from its grasp as it stood in an inky black sphere banished. Now the other problem... getting out of the water.
Well, this wasn't the ocean, so getting to some sides to climb wasn't too bad, and they were pretty easy to climb. Still, she had a harder time getting out of the water than Jr, since he could float to the top when freed while she had to climb with a heavily damaged leg. The thick water at least made it easier for her to get up, as it added a bit of buoyancy even for her. Meanwhile the crocodile was mad when it finally came out of banishment, but was pre-occupied itself as it had two identical copies of itself biting and pulling it down. And with its build, it really couldn't attack the illusions coming at it from its sides as they bit at it letting Blazermate pull herself out of the water.
Still she didn't get out of that unscathed, first needing to shake herself free of the water, then get back into the air with a crunched leg. "OK, that is NOT fair. Spawning things like that... Ugh. At least I've got stuff to deal with that now." Blazermate said, annoyed. And she'd be showing that off soon as she moved her attention to the zombie hippo and saw the Gravemind do some weird stuff and sending flood spawn after it to control it. Blazermate decided that wouldn't do, and summoned her striker Armstrong, to deal with this.
At this time the illusions despawned and the croc was free. Free to make a bite attempt at the closest thing which was Armstrong. Of course... Nanomachines made that bite completely ineffective and the nile croc soon found itself being a bat for Armstrong as he moved in to swipe at the flood spawn. Blazermate meanwhile zoomed over to the zombie hippo to bite it again, mutating it into a bulbous form that seemed that it could rupture at any moment. While Jr, Rika and Armstrong could clear out the flood, there were just too many of them. So instead Blazermate had an idea looking at the zombie hippo waiting to explode. Although she didn't need to really tell Armstrong what to do, as he charged the zombie hippo and smacked it with a force that caused a vicious explosion, harming the enclosure even more and sending the hippo flying towards D like a rocket. Needless to say the croc didn't survive. Blazermate was back on healing and evasion duty, although once Rika and Jr. were fine, she decided to move over to another area to help.
Roland, seeing that Nadia was occupied with Juri now, decided to move onto and keep dealing with D. With his new buffs, D's projectiles soon wouldn't be pushing him back anymore as Roland clashed with another round of fireballs and instead of being pushed back, just stood and deflected them, although he wasn't able to power through them just yet. With his previous clashes, he gained Emotion level 3, and gained Power of the Past, a womans voice saying "I’ll be the one to take things away this time…", making Roland slow down by 10%, but increasing his strength by 40%. He also gained the EGO Harvest. This increase in strength was what he needed to finally advance on D as his fireballs were now deflected by Roland full out, allowing him to advance.
Well, that was until Roland got close enough to D that he had to start using a stronger projectile. One that Roland wouldn't think would be as strong as it was. D pulled out a wine glass and threw it at Roland, the glass shattering as it hit Roland's hammer and pushing him back quite a bit. Then, swapping to stronger fireballs made of dark inferno, fired these at Roland. Roland could protect himself from these, but he'd find quickly they acted like Binah's pillar if not as strong as it took all his effort to protect himself. This essentially made him stay in place while dealing with them.
In the middle of the frenetic duel, though, an unexpected guest arrived in the form of Armstrong's improvised baseball. An enormous zombified hippopotamus, bulbous and pulsating with rot, hurled through the air in a majestic disaster that was as impossible to look away from as a train wreck. For a moment as Roland's eyes traced its inglorious flight path, it seemed like the bizarre projectile might catch D unawares, but appearances could be deceiving. Just before impact the Consul dissolved into mist, and the hippo's momentum carried it into the throne, exploding both in a burst of nasty acidic gunk. The shockwave seemed to disturb the mist, however, and in an instant D materialized, stumbling forward a few steps as if shoved from behind. He knew that Roland would try to make the most of this, though, and the vampire was far from helpless.
Which Roland did, although probably not in the way D expected. Using Harvest, Roland gained the appearance of a bloody scarecrow with a massive rakes for hands as the area turned into a wheat field for a few moments. This continued with Roland firing a spear of flesh from his chest at D. Although D countered this much like Roland has been dealing with his projectiles; batting it away with his hand extended to be a claw and making the attack fail. Clearly Roland would need a lot more power to deal with D's melee attacks. He still had more emotion levels to go, but this clearly wouldn't be easy.
While this had been going down, Sectonia had been focusing the Gravemind, taking its attention. Sure D had an ability to control it, and the Gravemind was still affecting everyone besides her usually, but she for the most part kept it off the others. Although she wasn't agile enough to keep the Gravemind within her more devastating auras such as her heartstopper aura or tesla aura. Its physical attacks on top of that didn't help matters as while Sectonia was very resistant to magical and energy attacks, physical attacks she didn't get a massive resistance to from her items and that meant she really couldn't take too many of the tentacle swipes from the Gravemind.
Much like what Sectonia did by summoning minions to deal with the Gravemind and the flood, the guardian summoned minions in kind. Many of which unlike Sectonia's minions could fly. Although they were also fairly weak in comparison to hers, they mostly focused their attention on her. it seemed they focused on fliers more than anything, but Sectonia had some things she could do to get rid of these things before they were able to explode upon her such as her death pulse, lightning, and her passive damage auras. But this also meant her damage output while dealing with these things was low. Well, until she got an idea.
Thinking about it, she'd have to be careful and teleport away quickly afterwords as to not be sprayed by the blood spray, but she could teleport behind the Gravemind, hit it with a projectile, then teleport behind it again to confuse it. She'd have to not be predictable as this thing seemed to learn quickly, but that wouldn't be too much of a problem... hopefully. Engaging her plan after the blood spurt stopped from its back, Sectonia dodged the tentacle swipe headed her way using this, teleporting behind the Gravemind and hitting it with a blast of holy beams that got dangerously close to hitting, but still missing D with their spread. She then teleported back to her original spot as the Gravemind swung at her, dodging the blow and raining holy swords upon the creature.
As it started to swing and flail wildly in her direction, Sectonia decided now would be a good time to activate her Chaos Shield. While she could teleport to try to dodge the whirling tentacles, their size and unpredictability made that option a poor choice. Especially since the Gravemind was covering its back with all that flailing. So instead Sectonia used her shield to get in close and pepper it with her more close range attacks to keep the pressure up.
Being one of the healers, Blazermate stayed in the center of the group as they wandered through the maze. At this point she had fully gained all of her charges as she prepared for what would be quite the fight coming up. Sectonia, having used what she could to clean herself of the blood, was quite the angry bee and flew in the front, ready to take out her fury on either the Guardian, or the next boss, whatever showed its face. And that rage was pretty clear to everyone. Roland finally was protecting those in the back, both keeping himself hidden but also making sure nothing snuck up on them.
Once they finally made it to the final chamber and the Guardian, to join the Guardian were three Consuls. Notably the one they were told was the most dangerous, A. Alongside him was D and O, Roland noting D looked like a bloodfiend that was trapped in a book in the library, just older and stronger. The others, well... A giant worm, the aforementioned A, and well, O was a mystery but he'd soon find trying to attack him would be pointless. Roland's floor was determined in this fight, and he got Social Sciences. Probably not the floor he wanted for a big fight like this, but it could be useful if A was as dangerous as was reported.
Sectonia, while aware of the Consuls, was more concerned with dealing with the giant ugly Guardian of the area. Granted, with how her attacks worked and assuming she'd be aggressive while enraged, she'd be causing chaos all about the battlefield eventually. Blazermate knew that she'd make for an explosive start, and wasn't disappointed. While Sectonia didn't start out initially doing some attacks, instead starting by summoning her Antlers in the form of red ones to use fire upon the Flood. This gave Blazermate some time to overheal people before they engaged with their relative fight.
This was before the show began and Sectonia began conjuring her Rings of Light, Void Globules, and her other projectiles. Once Blazermate started to see that, she placed her medibeam on the queen and gave her Kritz, her projectiles now glowing with an electric blue as they soared through the air. Due to the immense size of the Gravemind and the vague homing properties of Sectonia's random projectiles as well as their ability to bounce, it was much more difficult to avoid her attacks for the Guardian. Blazermate additionally debuffed the Gravemind with Disseminate, making any damage it took splash around it. She wasn't sure if this would help, but it couldn't hurt.
Granted once these attacks hit the Guardian, they bounced elsewhere into the battlefield, adding to the chaos that D was causing and a few stray projectiles flying towards O's little shenanigans. Still Kritzed, those projectiles lost none of their potency as they flew across the battlefield until they finally managed to bounce 3 times and dissipated on the 4th hit. Granted Blazermate's Kritz only lasted around 12 seconds, but that would be quite the opening... an opening that would make Sectonia the immediate focus of the Gravemind who didn't like getting sliced by the huge glowing buzzsaw rings.
Said Gravemind retaliated by swiping its tentacles at the bee queen, the queen also being a big target herself. While Sectonia could teleport to dodge the first swipe, the Gravemind was far more intelligent than the bee queen thought, and upon swiping at her again, it corrected its tentacle's arc in mid air and struck her as she reappeared. This did weaken the blow a bit, but it was still a strong hit taking a majority of her overheal away. While angry, she'd also have to be careful as while she was durable, too many hits like that would be bad.
Roland meanwhile decided to engage with D. Being the 'weakest' of the group that he could hit, Roland could use him to get going. Granted, weakest was relative, and D wasn't too concerned with Roland approaching him with his sword out. Many humans have tried, and many have failed. Only a select few had managed to defeat D in the past, but that was then and this is now, and this man's sword looked like a normal sword. Unconcerned, he threw some fireballs at Roland, who tried to use his sword to parry them. He failed though, with the fireballs pushing him back hitting harder than he expected. Having a slow start, he wasn't fast enough to really dodge them yet, but this at least got him to Emotion level 1. With this, a lion's voice said "There’s nothing that can stop us!" as he gained Courage, increasing his strength and defense by 20% as he had many allies around him.
The Consul paused for a moment as the flames from his barrage died out, his fist about an inch from his face as his elbow rested on the arm of his throne, his posture languid. Though decidedly unperturbed by the potential threat before him, he could see magic welling up around his challenger in the wake of his spellcasting. He seemed markedly more powerful than before, but still barely a blip on the vampire's radar. To keep the man and his allies back he raised his other hand like he might a wine glass, and from the floor erupted pillars of roaring flame. Roland used his greatsword to block, and though he managed to defend himself for the most part, the sheer firepower threw him off. D followed up by slamming his palm down, causing a ton of blood to burst from the Gravemind's body behind him and spray down over a wide area in front of him. The pounding visceral rain forced the Fixer back, but in exchange for his burns and painful cuts, Roland gained Emotion Level 2. A maniacal voice announced Rake with "The wisdom to move forward… I want it..!"
Once again, D noted a surge in power, but a mouse could grow ten times as strong and still not equal the might of a lion. At his pleasure the blood storm continued, a test of his challengers' will.
Blazermate meanwhile had to break off of Sectonia once her kritz was over to help those dealing with O. Being able to fly, she could ignore the terrain changes caused by his powers. Well, until a swamp tree sprouted up under her and got her stuck in its branches. It took her a bit to free herself, but robot strength at least let her get free in a reasonable time frame. Flying above the hippo cage, she flew behind it and used her suffering shield to bite its tough behind, infecting it with the zombie plague before she flew above and healed up those trapped by O's shenanigans. And hopefully she'd have a zombie hippo soon!
Childish experiments Bowser Junior, Rika, Roland & ft. Blazermate Words: 4543 (+5 exp) (+3 rapport for Jr, Rika and Roland for each other)
”Urgh. Guess I’m gonna have to pick up the slack then” Jr complained upon finding out that Sandalphon was going to be bailing out. Not that he exactly blamed her for doing so, she looked like a wreck and healer really was a thankless job, but someone had to do it.
”Maybe she should get some not human in her instead of human? Dragons n boat girls n stuff worked for me, no getting squishy and human and stuff here. Just not that big jerk dragon though I guess” Rika replied. The pair had set up on top of a little outcrop for a sit down and snack, along with Jr’s pokemon (and weird living worm grappling hook), though after the sweet filled fight with the Lilith both of them where finding they didn’t have an appetite for the sweet treats they'd gotten themselves while unsupervised.
”Is this what growing up is like, because it's lame. Stupid jerk. Now i really want to crush her face but noooo, she turned into a book or something”
”Oh yeah” Rika replied, and, having been reminded about that, thought to ask ”who was the guy who did that again?”
”uhhh. I dunno. Just some guy I guess?” Jr replied, not really being able to remember who had fought alongside them and Sandalphon at all now that he thought about it.
”The name is Roland ya squirts.” Roland said in a sarcastic manner, still bloody from the vein ride and a bit from the previous fight, but not as bad as he should be. If anyone could tell, he had shaken himself clean, or at least as close as he could get. While not sharing the rage of a few of the others, most notoriously the big bee, he was getting tired of this place.
”Quite the fight huh? Feels a bit like when I had to take down some abnormalities in their books. A real… puzzle dance fight all things considered.” He said, striking up friendly conversation. ”If I had a nickel every time I’ve had to fight a crazy lady in a blood themed area…” Roland said, pulling out Lilith’s book.
”Not entirely sure what her book will tell us about her, other than the crazy ‘kill kill kill’ stuff.” He then pulled out another book, the previous boss he fought, Killabilly. ”Nor this one, but this one didn’t talk at all.”
The kids were pretty clean all things considered, having been sprayed down by low power bubble beams, and then mostly dry thanks to floating above some hot hot goop. They also exhibited 0 shame at not remembering who Roland was, but they were interested in what he could do.
Rika immediately rattled off a bunch of questions ”How does it work? Can you still do spirit stuff with them? What do they say?” while Jr asked, a touch more practically ”can you do that to ones that are spirits already?” as he tapped away at an armory interface for a moment and used it to summon back the spirit of the towering cyber-skeleton called the Unsigned
”This guy really wanted a shiny rock we found” he explained, loosely, prompting Rika to quietly huff ”and that you then lost” still a little upset about her brother’s accidental burying of said stone under a mountain of rubble.
The prince coughed, actually a little embarrassed about that, but rather than carry on that conversation he instead stuck to the current one by explaining ”He also summoned a buncha skeleton soldier guys, but they were pretty much all pushovers. That Lillith lady was crazy in comparison for sure”
Roland began to answer their questions, this was something he was very accustomed to and he rather enjoyed sharing his knowledge even if it was new to him as well. ”Yes, these books can be used like spirits, but from what I understand, way better. Besides giving an overview of the person and what they might give you, if you burn the book you can choose between one of five items instead of getting only what it gives you. To my knowledge the books don’t expire unlike the spirits, and they probably have a spark of the Light of Creation, or whatever Angela called it, in them as well but I can’t use that.”
Showing the kids the book of Killabilly, Roland handed it to Jr. ”This is who I fought before Lilith. If you want to give it a read.”. A picture of the creature was on the cover. As he flipped through the book, the story of what Killabilly was, how he came to be, and what he wanted as well as his darkest secret. Granted most of this was pretty simple outside of the fact he was made of the souls of the damned coalescing into a building sized zombie.
”Well that’s kinda gross and cool at the same time” Jr commented regarding the creature’s lore, before also noting that ”I guess it also kinda works like that book Kamek got from some crazy mule guy we took down in a freaky prison. An ‘Archangel’ thing that gave me the creeps. Anyway It’d tell you stuff about people a bit like this, which is what made the mule guy crazy coz it said he was from a book and not real or something”
[color=d7d7d7[“I don’t know if this is the same thing. This is a person turned into a book more than something that tells you about things. Since you know, you kinda gotta defeat them to even get a book out of them.”[/color] Roland said. ”Information is very valuable where I’m from, and there was always someone looking for the secrets stored in these books when a guest perished in the library.”
Letting Jr. look over the book, and Rika too if she wanted, Roland eventually took it back. ”Now this doesn’t just tell you about the person, you can get things from them too. Which is probably why this matches so well with these ‘spirits’, they’re effectively the same kind of deal. Wanna see what loot we get from burning this?”
”Burning it?” Jr echoed, before looking up at Rika (who was doing a very careful read of the book with her massive gauntlet hands) with a look that said ‘please please please be done so i can roast it’ which she did not at all understand and so had to be asked that explicitly.
”oooh. Why didn’t you just say that?” she wondered once she had been asked, before tossing Jr who then in turn tossed it onto the ground and spat a fireball at it to set it alight, while imagining in his head that it was a dusty old textbook of Kamek’s about a subject he didn’t care about at all.
Once Jr. did that and the book burned, the ash, reminiscent of spirit ash, blew away and 5 burnt pages were left behind. Each had a picture on it, in order; A Pristine Elvis suit, A Guitar, a Microphone, Underworld Ectoplasm, and a small van. Each page under the picture also had a vague description on what each item did. The suit was just a costume, the Guitar could be used as a mace and made musical sounds when it struck, the Microphone could be used to amplify someone’s voice to do damage, the Underworld Ectoplasm seemed to be some kind of crafting ingredient, and the small van could be tossed to summon a fully human sized van.
”Well… you don’t need to BURN it burn it, you just have to destroy it. But yeah, burning it will destroy it. You can choose an item from one of the pages, but once chosen, the other pages crumble into dust.” Roland said, letting the kid have a pick of the items as he wasn’t really interested in any of them.
After looking over the things, Rika pushed for thought for a moment, raised a (large) finger and pointed ”Wait. Shouldn’t we have used the hat for that?”
”We got an actual entire van out of this! How could that be better? That’s crazy” Jr retorted as he grabbed the mini motor vehicle, holding it his hands like a toy with which he was clearly delighted
”Sure, but here, what if we do both? We could get, I dunno, a golden van or something” Rika replied, already tapping away at an armory inventory screen, scrolling through it till she found the hat of avarice, which she summoned to the rest spot.
”That’d just be slow and soft”
”But it would look way better than that one” Rika replied as she put on the hat, before opening a gauntleted and and making a beckoning gesture as she said ”Now let me destroy that big jerk already”
”Hat?” Roland asked, noticing that Rika mentioned something probably important.
”This one” Rika pointed at the very silly toothed chest hat she’d put on for distinctly non fashion related reasons ”Sectonia found it. It makes spirits give better stuff. Also it hurts to wear so could we do this quick, so be ready to heal me please bro?”
”Yup yup, ready for when you're done sis” Jr replied, picking up his paintbrush and priming to fix Rika up once she’d finished having her head nibbled on by the hat.
”Honestly, that sounds about right.” Roland said with a hint of grim to his voice. Nothing good came without suffering after all. Although at least this just injured you, instead of using all your future luck all at once. He kinda wanted to try the hat out for himself, but it would be best to see it used first.
Handing Rika the book of Lilith, who proceeded to toss it up in the air and blast it with flaming goop, again resulted in 5 pages, each with a different demonic weapon. An Axe, Dagger, Bow, Sword, and Mace. Surprisingly with how much she liked and used candy, there was no candy themed item there. Perhaps if they hadn’t used the helm, one would show up? But either way, these were 5 useful weapons, although the bow less so.
”Urgh, always a pain” the princess complained as she removed the helmet, put it down and got a quick ”Cure!” from her brother for the bite marks. Then she crouched down and took a look at the pages along with junior, but both of them were not particularly interested in actually using even if the thought they looked ”Neat” and ”Cool”
”Want one?” . ”Yeah. I don’t have an Axe.” Roland said, grabbing the page of the Demonic Axe. In his hands was just that, a demonic axe. The axe seemed to be on fire, although the fire didn’t hurt Roland so it probably lit opponents on fire. It was also hefty, and would do a fair amount of damage.
”Well, thats what the books do. There is probably more, but Angela would have to tell you about that.” Roland said, showing that he had no more books.
”Guess you can’t turn this into one then?” Jr asked, regarding the spirit of the Unsigned, and when the answer came back as no his only response was a shrug and an ”Oh well”
”Who’s Angela anyway?”
”Nope, I can only turn uh… living things? into books, not spirits.” Roland said, scratching his head at the comment, trying to think of why he couldn’t, but it was clear he couldn’t. Maybe something to do with how the library works or something?
”As for Angela, she is my friend from the library. Well, she ran the library and well, made it. No clue where she is, but she knows way more about this than I do. To be honest, she probably knows a lot about the world as it is now? Or not… She tended to be naive about the world but knew a lot of uh… how do I say niche things?” Roland said, giving a bit about Angela, but not really much else as a lot of what he’d say is more her place to say, not his.
”So, what about you two? Got anyone you miss or are looking for?” Roland assumed their parents, but looks could be deceiving.
Both gained a pair of conflicted looking expressions from that, but Jr hesitated to share their deal with someone they had just met Rika had little in the way of social filter and filled him in by saying that ”Papa and Kamek left to go keep Peach safe now that she’s a Consul, but Jr says they always come back from that kinda stuff so no not really. I wasn’t a person before like everyone else so where I’m from doesn’t matter to me. Just where I’m going”
”I… yeah! They’ll be fine” Jr agreed with what was definitely forced confidence, before scratching his chin, thinking about the question properly, and then saying ”I mean I kinda wanna know where the koopalings and the rest of papa’s minions are but, they’re not exactly gonna be strong enough to do” he gestured vaguely around at the massive demon tree they were in and the nightmares it contained ”all this stuff”
”Yeah. Angela can handle herself, but I doubt she’d be up for all of this. I’d say she probably has the other patrons to protect her if needed, but then Binah was in Midgar so…” Roland said, shrugging.
There was one thing Roland wanted to talk about, the reason he came over here. ”So I saw you transform in that last fight. What is it? It’s kind of similar to something in my world I suppose, but not really since you can change back. ”
”Huh? Oh that!” Jr replied, before eagerly showing off the trick like a kid with a favorite toy
”So what you can do is use one of these” he pulled out the cassette player and thumbed but did not pressed a red dotted on it ”to ‘record’ a monster into one of these old ‘tape’ things” which where clearly archaic technology for him ”Then once you’ve done that then you can play it back through some headphones like this:”
The boy, having slipped on the headphones while explaining, hit play on the tape and was suddenly transformed into the royal guard captain Undyne and in her voice declared ”and you can turn into an AWESOME monster! Got all their own moves, n stuff, and best of all getting hurt like this doesn't hurt you at all!”
There was another clock and then the prince had turned back, adding that ”Does kind of mess up the tape though if the monster ‘dies’ though. You gotta rewind them and it takes forever.”
”Doing a recording also takes a while, and you gotta beat up the monster first so that’s why we’ve only really got two good ones. Better the asset something’d be, harder it is to record, which is a pain. Really tricky to pull off when it’s been just us two. Like it woulda been such a risky thing to try vs that big jerk, even if she’d have been a real good one, so I didn’t even consider it” Rika added, being a bit of a downer all things considered
”me neither. Still, the ones we’ve got are pretty good. Shame we haven't worked out this whole fusion thing you can apparently do though, where you can combined two transformations into one big strong one” Jr added, finishing by saying that ”Not really sure how that works with being two people in one monster, but I bet we’d figure it out no sweat” to which Rika gave an ”mmm hmmm” of agreement to that last, saying ”we work together pretty well after all, so it’d be fine I’m sure”
Roland nodded, saying. ”Well, it's a nifty bit of tech. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Wings eventually made something like that, although with a lot more suffering involved I’m sure. That’s much nicer in comparison.” before asking the obvious question. ”But what ‘IS’ A monster? Just anything not human? Even so, I know a lot of humans that are worse than monsters. That just looks like a human turned into a fish to me. Granted, that looks a lot better than the fish woman I met once. Also, what's stopping you from copying, say, that big bee lady over there? Or the spooky guy in the armor, or the angel boy? Or the robot medic? Or the…” Roland went, stopping himself since this was getting a bit redundant and the semi joke was wearing itself thin considering he knew their names.
”Uhhhhh” Jr replied, having not thought of the implications, while Rika didn’t bother with them and just went with what they knew straight up ”We got it from a kingdom of monsters, like they called themselves that and everything but most of them were just, like, regular people till F tried to get em all to kill us. The people doing the recordings were humans who were living there disguised as monsters, so they weren’t’ gonna record, like, other humans even if they could coz that’d be pointless, so maybe that’s why they didn’t bring it up?”
”Huh. Yeah. I guess maybe they can record whatever? Dunno, haven't tried much” Jr said, getting to the heart of their lack of data before addressing the last point with a question that was ”It’d be kinda be weird to have another Blazermate or Sectonia running around in a fight though, right? I think”
”Another Bazermate would be super useful for the team though, right? Especially with Sandalphon heading back, we’re losing a core part of our military formation” Rika pointed out, slipping into military jargon in a somewhat jarring manner given its contrast both in tone and in vocabulary to her usual childish tones she’d gotten from being around Jr a lot.
”Exactly. Might be something to try later. I don’t think Blazermate would mind, from what I gather, she's a mass produced robot anyway. Probably has something special with her though to come this far and do what she has done.” Roland said, remembering the robot’s mutterings in Midgar about other medabots and such.
”Wait she is? Huh. I just kinda thought she was someone special like everyone else instead of someone like me” Rika said and then added on ”I mean that, like, in the big system-y thing that’ll respawn us if we die I’m no one. Just some peon of the abyssal fleet. The me who is me is someone though, if you see? And this me matters” which got her brother nodding along when he’d been about to object to the negativity in her initial phrasing.
”Well, If you can use those things but they just have a long reload, you could ask her and see if it works? Although I've got a feeling it probably won't work.” Roland said, glancing over to Blazermate.
Speaking of the robot girl, she was moving around, making sure everyone was healed up and ready for what could be the guardian coming up. Unlike her angelic compatriot, she didn’t tire or have any stamina to worry about. Although her healing was single target, not AoE, so she had to go to each person one by one.
Despite Roland’s pessimism, the kids still wanted to test out to see if making a recording would work, and so hurried on over to her, with jr calling out ”Blazermate-Blazermate! Can we try out a thing on you?” before she could zoom away from her latest patient.
Blazermate, being called by Jr, stopped her flight and did a strange maneuver where she orbited around him a bit before landing. ”Whats up? Need a look over?” Blazermate said, sending her healing drone out to do some patch work while Jr had her attention.
”Nah I’m good I did us already” Jr replied, giving his paintbrush a little twirl for emphasis, before saying that ”What we wanna do is try and make a tape recording of you so that we can turn into you and have, like, two of you. Coz your so useful” and then showing her the tape recorder.
”So we can do this” Rika added, before helpfully demonstrating the power of the tapes by flicking in and out of the Beast form ”but with you instead”
”Uuhhh… Hows that work? Do I just stand here or is this a ‘beat up the robot’ sorta deal?” Blazermate said, more worried about the last part. She didn't seem to mind having a clone of herself running around at all.
”I mean, we could…” Jr began to say, but Rika shook her head, saying ”Really don’t wanna risk that with those around” while pointing out at one of the infested clusters. It was distant, but odds were good that the sound of fighting, even one sided fighting, could attract attention which would be not at all something they wanted when their best healer was hurt.
As such, they resolved to just give it a go in general and see what happened. As it turned out, the tape did indeed begin recording, making a distinctive sound that the kids recognised from their last four recordings. Mostly. It sounded far more strained, the common tappe’s wheels practically grinding as it tied and tried to do its work, before it was all too much and it buckled under the pressure, tape snapping in half a dozen places, and the entire cassette cracking under the pressure.
”Awww” entoned disappointedly, before giving an ”eh” and a shrug before extracting and tossing the tape, saying that ”It was working for sure, but looks like your too strong for just a regular tape?”
”Makes sense? We beat up Undyne and the Beast before beating em up, and Blazermates probably higher rank than them with all her fusion powers n stuff?” Rika guessed, though obviously it was somewhat hard to compare a support to two tough frontline fighters.
”Well, I guess that makes sense? I don’t know anyone else who can make people invincible like I can.” Blazermate said. Roland had a different take, inferring how spirits and his books worked, there was probably something similar going on here.
”Or perhaps it's a ‘strength of spirit’ like you said. Like she has a super strong spirit, and these tapes can only ‘record’ spirits of a certain strength. I know that in the library we had books of different power based on the willpower or strength of those that came to the library. ” Roland said, giving his thoughts on what was going on. ”Either way, it seems like that answers my questions about the whole concept.”
”Well, I'm almost done patching people up. Is that all you guys needed or is there something else?” Blazermate said, being more matter of fact than anything as she knew that there was going to be a big fight coming up.
”Think so” Jr began to say, before changing his mind when his eyes happened to land on the robo-medic’s shield. It sported a jaw that could turn undead into stronger undead, but generally didn’t see much use. He, however, had something in his dufflebag that she might find use out of.
”Actually, here, maybe you can use this?” he said, pulling out the spirit of the cyber-skeleton Unsigned they’d failed to book-ify earlier ”He could summon a load of skeleton guys which used shields and guns, I thought that’d maybe work with your bitty shield thing?”
”Yeah, I could try it as a striker I think? I got something that lets me have 2 more which is neat.” Blazermate said, thanking Jr. and trying to make a striker out of the Unsigned. Having some minions could be neat, especially if she can mutate them into weird things like she did the drybones.
Unsigned Long cooldown. Can either appear to unleash a powerful blast from its giant revolver, or summon a squad of three bonenoids at once
”Nice”
”How’s the healing and stuff going? Everyone doing alright?” Rika then asked, glancing up and after where the medi-bot’s drones had gone.
”Uh… fine? People are more tired than hurt now, but I can’t really tell how tired they are, just how healthy they are. And I never get tired so… yeah. ” Blazermate said with an affirmative nod. ”I just hope we’re close to this guardian. We’re a healer down and I don’t know if our luck can hold on people being split up.”
”Yeahhhh we’re gonna have our work cut out for us, woulda been super handy if this had worked out and we had two of you” Jr agreed with a sigh, tapping his paintbrush against his shoulder ”and I dunno about you, but even if there is some weird meat monster healer here, I dun wanna turn into it”
”Probably should head out before they show up again. That big head one seemed smart, bet it's looking right now”
”Yeah” Blazermate and Roland said at the same time, although one with an inflection of ‘jeez, more?’ and the other was tired.
With the guardian’s arms on their way over and the Corruptor on its way out, Goldlewis got moving. He leaped back to the arena’s right lane with the help of a magic airdash, then checked the area. Sectonia had the flying critters under control, so he was more worried about the arena itself. As the subtle sway of the plant matter beneath his feet could attest, this unusual battlefield hung from the ceiling, so too much damage to the fleshy red cage or interwoven veins could drop the whole thing. Since the Corruptor didn’t need to concern itself with falling, he’d feared that it would actively attempt to undermine the team during the fight, but no dice so far. For now, he and the others could focus on the guardian, and with all its limbs back now the golem was more armed and dangerous than ever. As the renewed titan turned its furious strength toward Pit and Ganondorf, enormous swords carving through the air, Goldlewis began to charge another shield so that the warlord could continue to tank.
Pit was picking up the strategy now, or was pretty sure about it anyway. The temptation to just send seeking arrows at the real arena boss was still there, but going all out against its sentinel to draw it over seemed even more simple. And if he could trust Sectonia with getting rid of the little guys, then he could do just that and continue to focus on offense.
He slipped underneath the swing of one of the guardian's free floating arms and once more leapt over the gap between lanes, this time directly at the titan. Halfway through his jump his bow disappeared from his grasp and the pair of orbitars took its place, swirling around him. The shields' rotation began to speed up just before Pit was about to make contact, and when the guardian raised one of its remaining arms to sweep out and intercept him the angel's orbitars shot forward as well. One met the stone arm of the guardian in a block, while the other smashed against the side of its glowing head to deliver a Shield Smite.
That should make things go a little faster, he thought. A grin formed on Pit's face, though it was quickly replaced by a look of surprise as the guardian swung its other arm up at him. The free orbitar circled around and wedged itself between the stone cleaver and Pit, struggling valiantly as it absorbed most of the impact but ultimately not able to prevent the angel from being flung back. He unfurled his wings to stop himself from going too far, landing precariously back in the middle lane he'd come from. That was fine - he traded out weapons again to fight off the arm that had chased him over with his bow.
Ganondorf, too, had begun to see the strategy at play. He had his Phantom Steed still and could conceivably pursue the Corruptor with it. But to what end? Landing some strong hits on the creature only for the duration of his summon to end and send the warlord plummeting to his doom? Much to Ganondorf’s own chagrin, he had no choice but to play this battle by its intended rules. Still, he did observe a seeming weakness that the guardian had as he recalled the effectiveness of his lighting blast against its head. And while he avoided the swing of one of the arms after dismissing the Phantom Steed, Ganondorf then summoned a squad of Moblin archers. ”Aim for the head!” He ordered, loud enough that the other Seekers could hear if they hadn’t noticed the same things that he had. ”Lightning seems particularly effective on the metal one, use that to our advantage!” Then he looked for an opening and attempted to spear-throw his trident at the guardian’s head, hoping to recreate his previous attack against it from earlier.
Even as it took multiple headshots, the guardian pushed forward with relentless fortitude. Heavy blades in hand, its four arms became a whirlwind of bone-crushing, tree-splitting stone as it stomped toward Ganondorf’s position, each enormous stride able to cover more ground than he or the Moblins could backpedal without a full-blown retreat. With its vitality newly restored by the Corruptor the huge golem was nigh unstoppable, putting Moblin after Moblin into the meat grinder. Goldlewis was quickly forced to retreat as well, since he couldn’t jump over or get around the guardian’s monumental lariat, and if he got stuck in blockstun he’d have to sacrifice all his hard-earned Tension for Faultless Defense, or else take an absurd amount of chip damage.
Unfortunately, the veteran quickly found himself without anywhere to run. Once he reached the rightmost lane’s lower extremity in the arena’s bottom-right corner, the guardian’s onslaught meant that he could do nothing but jump ship to the center lane. At that point, though, Goldlewis realized he’d made a mistake–the Corruptor was not some mindless monstrosity after all. While its guardian fought, it positioned itself at the far end of the gap between the center and right lanes, and now its laser screamed forth. Goldlewis, Ganondorf, and what remained of his retinue were trapped between a mammoth meat grinder, crimson death, and the empty space beyond the delicate organic web that held the battlefield aloft. “Aw, hell.”
Having been dealing with the fliers and keeping the adds off her group, Sectonia figured that’d be enough for them to focus on the main fight and not get caught in any obvious traps or ploys. She was mistaken as the Guardian and the Corruptor had worked together to get everyone in the same lane as the Corruptor began to charge up and fire his laser, to cover their escape from the Guardian’s attack.
Well, she could at least swoop in and save one of them. Although considering their sizes, there was only really one choice, although she could help the other one out. She gave Goldlewis her chaos shield so he could take a hit before swooping down and grabbing Ganondorf. The king of darkness being in the sky essentially let him leap over the Guardian’s attack. What he did after that was his decision though. Much to the king’s own chagrin, there was precious little he could do at the moment. It would be a little while yet before he could summon Phantom Ganon, and the Moblins had already proved ineffective. And with no Warframe energy to use, that left the warlord with only his swords and trident.
Dodging the free floating arm and hopping over to target the guardian's rear side, maybe get it to change direction in order to help his allies, had been Pit's latest intention before the Corruptor made its move. The sudden tunnel of energy engulfing the gap put a stop to that plan before it had even really begun. Now there was no way he could get over there to help until the giant laser between them fizzled out.
"Are you guys okay?!" he shouted over. The guardian's separated arm came at him with a heavy slash while he was apparently distracted, but with a quick Thundering Sands Pit skated down his lane out of the way. Immediately afterward jumped up towards it, kicking against it away from him with both feet to shove it into the laser's path. Sadly, the beam had no more effect on the arm than it did against the guardian itself earlier.
“Hey, wait!” With Ganondorf already protected by his Shield Charger, and a lot more mobile than Goldlewis thanks to his bullet jumps, he would have been a much better candidate to shield and leave behind in the veteran’s eyes, but instead Goldlewis found himself alone between a rock and a hard place while the warlord got airlifted to safety. “Consarn it all,” he grumbled through gritted teeth. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he considered his options. He doubted that Burst would knock the guardian down, or that his armored Wild Assault could overpower the golem’s whirlwind advance. His strikers wouldn’t help, and even if he could coax out a new Mothman cannon in time, it could only carry him in short bursts. He couldn’t see or hear the others over the Corruptor’s beam, so there was only one ally he could rely on right now.
“...UMA!”
As if intuiting his intentions, the cryptid obeyed. His coffin cracked open, and from within reached elongated arms with a starry cyan texture, first one, then three, then five, then eight. Like the limbs of a spider they stretched out and seized the arena’s organic web. While some hands grabbed on, others reached higher, pulling the coffin into the air. Goldlewis held tight to its dangling chain and was soon hauled off his feet, ascending under the UMA’s power. By that time the guardian was on him, but thanks to Sectonia’s Chaos Shield (and his latest Shield Burst) he shrugged off a couple hits until he’d risen out of range. The trap was sprung, but nobody was home. “Hah! How’d ya like them apples!?” Goldlewis hollered as he slapped the coffin like he might a good friend’s shoulder. “Good work, partner!”
The Corruptor’s laser petered out, and the fight was on. Goldlewis began by bidding the UMA to let go, then plummeting down onto the guardian from above with a heavy coffin slam into repeated Behemoth Typhoons. His pummeling left the guardian dazed, its angry swipes just a little too slow as Goldlewis dropped down and rolled away behind it. Now it was the golem who was cornered, and before the Corruptor got going again, the Seekers had to seize this opportunity.
The King of Evil, meanwhile, was beginning to really feel the frustration mounting. No less than two of the guardian’s arms were hounding him and preventing him from launching any attacks on the guardian itself. And with dwindling options, Ganondorf had switched his swords in the hopes of building up dark energy for an explosion attack later. But that also meant he was doing precious little in the way of short term damage to this thing. At one point he summoned both of his strikers - Riptor and Blast Hornet so that the former could spit a fireball at the guardian’s head while the latter sent out a volley of hornet drones with his Search Strike attack.
Now that he knew everyone that had been stuck in the right lane behind the beam was alright, Pit resumed the fight against the guardian with vigor. Though at that point the arm he'd kicked away had floated back up completely unscathed, the angel focused his offense on the stone golem. When he fired his arrows he took a few seconds between each one, letting them build power before they shot over the lanes and struck against the automaton. Unless he wanted to add some fire to his attacks he didn't need to stand still, so he could duck and weave to keep out of the arm's reach while he loosed dash shots. Once they damaged the guardian enough it would collapse like it did before, right? So he wouldn't need to worry about evading for much longer anyway - a couple of close calls and eaten hits was nothing.
Sectonia meanwhile, knowing the creatures had high defense, started throwing her void globules at the Guardian, their properties bypassing its defensive stats as the void clouds clinged and damaged it in small void explosions. Although she’d need to swap back to dealing with the air units before long, she could suppress some of them for now with a rain of holy swords. Once the corruptor exposed itself again, she had a few choice moves for that one.
Powerful and precise shots and spells from Pit and Sectonia began to take their toll as Ganondorf and Goldlewis strove to keep the guardian busy. It was impossible to avoid every attack, especially with the golem’s remotely-controlled arms attacking from odd angles, but the frontliners kept at it with some help from the veteran’s regular shield bursts in lieu of any healing. Goldlewis could jump deceptively high when he employed a magic glyph as an airborne springboard, but his enemy loomed even larger, so he focused on bashing its knees with his battering ram of a coffin. “Hrrrah! Grrrrrah! Ha-ah!” Beneath the weight of each Behemoth Typhoon, hairline fissures spread and stone shards went flying.
Ganondorf’s sword and spear gave him the wrong damage types when it came to crushing solid rock, but he backed up his might with magic, and combined with the veteran’s brutish blunt force the two were getting results even without a clean shot at the guardian’s head. For all its reach and power, this golem was a simple machine, and it was always going to be the Corruptor to throw a wrench in the works. Trusting the others to call out any danger, Goldlewis put everything he had into this brawl. Smash, backdash, run in, smash, block, block, smash! They were getting close–he could feel it. And this time, Goldlewis had a plan. “Ganondorf!” he called over the action. “When it goes down, gimme your strength!” This elicited a raised eyebrow from the Warlord, but he still nodded anyway after that.
A moment later, one of Pit’s charged arrows sealed the deal. An ethereal clang resounded through the arena as corrupted magic burst from the guardian’s crystalline head, and for the second time it slumped down. Goldlewis wasted no time; he threw his coffin aside, then seized the guardian’s arm. “Now! HEAVE!” He pulled with all his might in an attempt to topple the top-heavy golem and send it into freefall over the edge. At that moment, though, the Corruptor arrived. Its loomed overhead and began to open its underside, ready to pump the guardian -and any nearby Seekers- full of crimson energy.
Ganondorf didn’t exactly know how heavy this guardian was going to be. But he was certain no matter what its weight was, it was no match for the power of the Triforce. And so when the Gerudo seized guardian’s arm himself, the Triforce mark on his right hand glowed with more pronouncement as the King of Evil invoked his Triforce of Power. Then with tensed muscles he too gave a mighty heave, teeth gritted and eyes furrowing into a look of focus and concentration.
Seeing what Goldlewis and Ganondorf were up to, Pit let out a short laugh. "Good idea!"
Of course since the Corruptor could fly it could possibly just go down and pick its golem up and bring it back, but the Seekers would have found a way to be long gone by then if it happened.
Since two of the Seekers were focusing on tossing the guardian over the side of the lane, it left just he and Sectonia to deal with the Corruptor. Pit had seen the beating the thing had taken the first time around so he knew he didn't have the pushing power to physically keep it away from the guardian. He'd have to leave that to the queen bee, if she was so inclined. Instead he'd try and make up for the loss in damage himself. For that he had to get closer, so he hopped back to the right lane behind the Corruptor, opposite his allies. He dismissed his bow as he did, summoning his Breaking Palm. The swirling rainbow orb flew into his skin just before he took position, and Pit steadied his firing arm with his free one. This close the power of the Palm's energy blasts would be near maximum, and their sheer output a marvel.
Of course it wasn't until he actually fired that Pit realized that going through two back to back battles without healing might be starting to take its toll on him. The barrages of light he released didn't come as quickly as they could have, but it was still fast and intense. And it would have to do.
Sectonia meanwhile, with the Corruptor open to attack once again, began to attack it in earnest. Hopefully this would be the last time they’d need to do anything to this thing with this round of attacks. And as such, much to her dislike, she had to get in close to deal as much damage as she could to this thing. And as annoying as it was, she’d have to intercept this thing. At least being so close to it, a lot of her more close range stuff that she had been using on the flying minions would now be affecting the Corruptor. Her death pulses, tesla charges, the occasional bolt from healing herself, her heartstopper aura, and her much more difficult to dodge attacks such as her lightning and point blank large Rings of Light. She was done with this fight, and really done with most of this tree’s shenanigans at this point.
Although being in the way of the Corruptor and the Guardian, made her the main target of the Corruptor’s attacks.
Between the two of them, Sectonia and Pit put the Corruptor’s impressive durability to the test. Luminous rings and arcs filled the air in a majestic lightshow, each splash of deadly radiance illuminating the Qliphoth’s gloomy interior. Their target creaked like felled timber beneath the weight of their brilliant onslaught, physically repelled from its destination, but that wasn’t all they achieved. While Pit’s light rays boasted excellent homing abilities, Sectonia’s light rings expanded outward in all directions, which meant they eventually came into contact with the suspended arena’s organic lattice. Her power sheared through the plant matter with much greater ease than it did the Corruptor’s hardy wooden exterior, and after just a few seconds, enough had given way that the whole arena was beginning to rock dangerously.
Luckily, the other half of the team wouldn’t take very long. Ganondorf was right: despite the guardian’s impressive bulk, the Triforce of Power -with more than a little help from Goldlewis- reigned supreme. Once they maneuvered the disabled golem enough, its own bodyweight took over, and the whole thing toppled over the edge toward the abyss. “Hah!” Goldlewis shouted after it, his muscled aching as his chest heaved from the exertion. “Serves ya right, ya doggone-!”
His taunt gave way to a panicked grunt as the floor beneath him shuddered violently. For a terrifying moment he fought to steady himself, slowly backpedaling from the edge. He looked up toward the resplendent lightshow as Pit and Sectonia continued to chip away at the Corruptor. He realized what was happening, as well as something else: that the monster’s vulnerable underside was closing up now that its guardian was gone, and the Seekers were about to lose their best way to deal damage to it. If this battlefield fell apart beneath them, this fight would be a hell of a lot harder, so he knew he had to act now.
“UMA!” Goldlewis roared as he kicked his coffin. The lid popped open, and the veteran reached in to pull out his new Yowie harpoon gun. He took aim, then fired up into the Corruptor’s guts. “Hrrrrrrgh!” Planting his feet, Goldlewis held fast, determined to neither let the monster get away nor close up. “Take it down! Now!”
With very little time to process what was happening, Ganondorf simply had to assume that Goldlewis noticed something and acted as well. He summoned his trident to his hand and threw it, hoping to skewer the Corruptor’s underside and give it a good blast of lightning for good measure.
Alright right up close and attacking, Pit kept at it even as the lane they were standing on was jostled dangerously. With a shout he mustered up what extra energy he had to push the Breaking Palm into firing more, firing faster, as the fusillade of light continued to blast up into the Corruptor's only vulnerable point.
With everyone throwing in their big attacks at the Corruptor, Sectonia decided that it had to be injured quite a bit now and used Reaper’s Scythe on it, conjuring a scythe of death out of the air which swung at the Corruptor, Sectonia using the windup of the scythe to throw one last void globule at the creature to deal a bit more damage before the scythe hit.
Locked in place and subjected to a withering barrage of attacks, many dealt directly to its vulnerable insides, the Corruptor could only last so long. A deep, resounding howl issued from it as it bucked suddenly. Its root-like tentacles gave one final, violent thrash, then went limp, and as its gravity-defying magic gave out, the Corruptor began to fall from the sky. “We got it!” Goldlewis exclaimed, though he couldn’t celebrate too much, since he could immediately see where this was heading. He hurried to wrench out the Yowie’s harpoon by the cable, then get everything stowed away before the massive corpse made impact. When it slammed down into the arena’s surface, the damaged organic web gave way, and the whole right lane began to crumble. Its fall kickstarted a dangerous chain reaction that would take the center and left lanes -not to mention the Seekers who couldn’t fly- with it.
Goldlewis, at least, could double jump high enough to grab hold of the root lattice above where Sectonia damaged it. The UMA reached out of his coffin to lock its arms around the veteran’s shoulders, which meant he could use both hands to haul himself up. It was no easy feat given his inordinate bulk, but despite his injuries and extra baggage, Goldlewis just barely managed. One possessed of two handholds and footholds, he could finally relax somewhat. Though his team was still in a precarious position, they were alive, and that was all he could ask.
Pit had wanted to just flop onto his back and take a breath after the Corruptor was defeated, but when it fell and took out the only solid ground in the area he found himself scrambling to get to safety. A stumble prevented him from getting the best footing before he jumped, so when he did he didn't go as high as he could have. His wings pushed him towards the nearest section of the fungal lattice that was still relatively intact, it was going to be a real close call reaching it - at least until he felt something snatch him out of the air, and he blinked over his shoulder to find Sectonia having picked him up before he plummeted. Only a little embarrassed, Pit smiled sheepishly at her and flashed her a victorious V-sign in thanks. Sectonia didn’t reply one way or another, more so just done with this whole fight than anything, although in her head she was a bit confused as to why Pit couldn’t fly with his wings. She did hear him mumbling about needing power from his goddess at one point in Skyworld, but that is kind of sad if true.
Reaching a lattice was a simple enough affair for Ganondorf as well. The bullet jump skill he had long since obtained from Oberon Prime was enough for him to launch himself into an initial leap before using the double part of the skill to make up the remaining distance. For a spirit he had obtained quite a while ago in the Under, the warframe in question and its related abilities had proven themselves to be quite useful to the Gerudo. He made a mental note to look into expanding his Warframe abilities somehow if at all possible. He’d grown quite fond of making use of them.
A few seconds into watching the wreckage of the arena and the disintegrating corpse of the Corruptor plummet into the depths of the Qliphoth, the Seekers received one more surprise in the form of random reward cards. Some weren’t exactly in the most convenient spot for this right now, so with the added incentive of getting a move on before any more of the lattice broke off, the four needed to make their choice.
Dazzling Display - your attacks have a 20% chance to make your foe miss 20% of the time for 9 seconds Divine Construct: Metastatic Field - when someone you shielded is attacked, deals damage equal to 280% of the shield’s pre-attack value to the attacker, though this cannot defeat an enemy Revenge Bullets - return weak projectiles toward sender, and take 20% less damage from projectiles plus explosions
Perfect Image - in each encounter, you deal 15% more damage until hit, and if you take no more for 15 seconds, you regain this Exposed Brain Matter - basic melee attacks release a magic pulse targeting a random nearby enemy that deal 30% of the attack’s damage Shotgun Shoulders - your projectiles with random patterns will now bounce after hitting solid surfaces up to two times, getting faster with each bounce
Support Fire - when landing an attack, your heart fires a weak, seeking spirit arrow at the same target Arrow Shades Bow - when attacking a target right after an ally, your own damage is boosted by 10% of that ally’s attack until that target is hit by someone else Impact Wrists - enemies (or corpses) you launch deal much more damage on impact
Scorchberry Charm - you can pin this to a minion to halve its health but double its attack Reflection - once per encounter, survive a killing blow at 1% HP Mortal Coil - once every 3 seconds, you can empower your spear with dark energy, which will allow you to reel it (and all targets it hits) toward you once thrown
Given his current situation, Goldlewis continued to hold on with both hands until he’d made his decision, and he did not take long to decide. Dazzling Display seemed, ironically, lackluster, but both of the others were tempting. After a moment he opted to go with a second shield-related bonus to add a little more punch to his defensive abilities through immediate retaliation. He hoped that the payback damage would apply to his block as well, but he wasn’t going to count on that. Once he tapped the card for Metastatic Field, he heard the clang of hammers and the shrill scratch of crystal against stone. Through his vision flashed the image of an amber colossus the size of a planet, but before he could even focus, the vision was gone. With no time to lose, Goldlewis began to maneuver his way along the latticed curtain toward the nearest intact bloodstream in the hopes of using it to reach firmer footing. “Guh…doggone it…these old bones are achin’...somethin’ fierce…”
In Pit's choices, the first card seemed like it would only be a little useful, adding incremental damage when he was already fighting. Not to mention he could just fire seeking arrows himself. The last card looked a little more fun and slightly more useful, but if he was reading the middle card correctly (which, in fairness, he may not have been since reading was still kind of new to him) then so long as he wasn't fighting alone, he could constantly be doing more damage. This one's the best pick, right? Argh I wish I could ask someone for advice! Of course he had someone specific in mind, but since that wasn't an option he just reached out to take the card marked Arrow Shades Bow.
Though it wasn't Lady Palutena, Pit did see some sort of divine being, part chariot and part charioteer, accompanied by the sound of an arrow being fired from a mighty bow filling his ears. The vision lasted for only a brief moment, and then it was gone while the interior of the hollow they'd been fighting in filtered back into view. That must have been what Captain Falcon mentioned before.
Sectonia looked at her choices, and while they all looked pretty useful, making her projectiles even more difficult to dodge or even do multiple hits seemed like the best idea, even if the 15% extra damage was very tempting. So she got the Shotgun Shoulders, now making it that her projectiles were much more difficult to handle.
Once again, Ganondorf was faced with a choice between three different floating cards. The first one was not suitable for himself due to the cost of cutting health in half, but perhaps for Phantom Ganon it would be useful? The second card sounded like something that could prove a useful wildcard in a pinch, but something about taking that card rubbed his pride the wrong way. As though taking it would be admitting that he - the Great King of Evil - could ever be felled that quickly by any foe. As such, Ganondorf’s attention finally fell to the third card. Dark magic was something he was already intimately familiar with, and an ability that would allow him to use his trident like a harpoon to pull foes into reach of a follow up attack such as the circular lighting trident throw? Yes, such a thing could certainly prove useful. In the end, he chose the third card - Mortal Coil. And just like before, the isolation faded and he found himself among his allies again.
”Hmph, another challenge and more power for us as a result.” He said with a grimace. Normally a man like him would be all too eager to expand his power. But something about the nature of this still bugged him. ”And yet I can’t help but wonder why. Is the tree trying to stop us or aid us? Because it appears to be doing both.”
“This hellhole’s been infested by all kinds o’ crap. Like some kinda breedin’ ground for undead horrors.” Finally, the veteran’s climb across the fungal jungle gym ended next to one of the Qliphoth veins. With the lanes demolished and much of the lattice torn away, only the bloodstreams remained as anchor points for what remained of the structure. Goldlewis propped himself up and took a second to rest, since anyone with a cutting implement would have a much easier time getting in. “Dunno if the tree’s winnin’ or all the godawful parasites, but whichever one ain’t probably don’t mind a little help dealin’ with whichever one is.”
Pit wasn't at all nonplussed about the random rewards, especially after experiencing that vision. He shrugged his shoulders and offered another perspective. "I think some gods are just rooting for us and giving us stuff for a job well done. They get bored super easily and end up always messing around with the overworld."
”This reminds me of the, ugh… basement. That gave us rewards as well. If this power was offered by the spirits of the bosses it would make more sense than what's going on here. The only thing I can think of is that after the void out, all the ‘good’ of the area has coelesed in here, manifesting itself when a boss dies to help us free it or something.” Sectonia said, agreeing with Ganondorf on how strange this was and trying to figure out an explanation.
”Hmph, the Basement…” Ganondorf mused. “...I’d nearly forgotten about that accursed place. But now that you mention it, yes, it did similarly do something like this, didn’t it?” At the same time he took one of his swords and began to use it to cut open the vein in order to give the Seekers their way out and into whatever the next trial would be.
Level 12 Sectonia (holding 4 level up) (76/120) and Lvl 3 Grimm (27/30) Word Count:2384
High above the ash-covered battlefield that the Seekers had hurriedly left behind, the open air gave way to layers upon layers of hellish, meat-red plant matter, assembled in masses the size of skyscrapers that formed the solid core of the demon tree. Even before the Qliphoth’s parasitization, though, the termite-esque Empusa that dwelled in this place had meticulously carved out many winding tunnels and cavernous hollows in its trunk. One such cave opened directly into the lower atrium itself, a promising cavity in the vaulted ceiling, but when Sectonia fluttered inside she found little in the way of relief from the infestation’s grossly biological ugliness.
Instead she discovered what appeared to be a breeding ground, where leeches swollen to the size of crocodiles clung to the walls in droves, slowly siphoning off the Qliphoth’s stolen blood for themselves. Worse still were the malignant wretches that might have at some point been humans, each both gaunt and bloated in hideous fashion, pieced and adorned by metal instruments in a state of perennial torture, and festooned with the living bloodbags of vampiric elixir that made them into these malformed things in the first place. Some darted or crawled around in manic frenzy, licking ichor from mutilated leeches in the hopes that more blood would kickstart their failed transformations, while others simple stewed in the muck. But worst of all was the horror that floated weightlessly above it all, an ovoid mass of pinkish tissues, limp arms, dangling intestines, and writhing tentacles, with a dozen fleshless skulls that stared blankly in all directions. The Gaster oversaw its foulblood brood with the aid of four very long, sinuous cephalopod tentacles, each tipped with a scimitar hook, and Sectonia’s arrival did not go unanswered.
At her intrusion, the sanguisuges stirred. As the thralls quickly formed into a mob, the Gaster stretched out its elastic tentacles, hooked onto a section of wall, and yanked itself over to try and stay out of sight, though the rapid yellow flashes of its mucal sacks betrayed its presence. Before the assault began, however, one of the Qliphoth veins bulged outward. A black claw slashed through both the tunica and a leech attached to it, and in a spray of foul fluids Grimm launched into the arena. He landed in a low stance just shy of one of the massive holes in the floor, his six limbs splayed out beneath his cloak. The sight of another hollow full of undead vermin did not please him, but it seemed that this time he’d have an ally.
”Good to see that I’m not the only one that is going to take out this horrid threat and its ugly spawn.” Sectonia said, a bit annoyed that due to the limited battlefield her minions would do much here. Perhaps later she’d summon them once she saw what this giant creature did.
With that, the Gaster unleashed its beam, a ray of condensed ichor sweeping across the sordid battlefield toward the intruders.
Sectonia, not wanting to see this horrid creature for longer than she had to, blasted it with her holy rays, flying away from the ichor beam as she blasted. She’d also try to keep in range of her auras to do some extra damage to this thing, but once she started to get close, it’d run off with scary speed and attempt to redo its ichor blasts. So it would be one of these huh? Well, her rays of holy light could blast it from afar until it fell to the ground, seemingly stunned from the damage.
As radiant lights flashed overhead, Grimm attended to the wretches on the ground. They staggered toward him without any form of cohesion, driven by raw, bestial hunger. When they attacked, they flailed their limbs in clumsy, unpredictable strikes, but Grimm could see the rabid strength behind them. A dance would be wasted on Philistines like these, and yet it seemed the Troupe Master had no recourse. After bowing, he darted among the vampiric thralls, each blur of pitch-black claws a deft stroke that painted the hollow’s floor in fetid foulblood. He whirled, pivoted, leaped, and swooped in rhythm with some unseen orchestra, accepted partner after partner, and was left wanting. As he threw open his cape to cremate a small mob of vessels with firebats, he noticed an especially deformed sanguisuge as it crept up behind him. He spun and let fly his Grimmchild, which pierced through the wretch’s gut, unfurled its wings, and redeemed the vile thing through scarlet flame.
At that point the Gaster fell from the sky, dazed from Sectonia’s magical bombardment. Grimm turned to accept the kind offering, only for a rogue thrall -missing an arm and presumed slain- to gouge at his head. Viscous hemolymph seeped from the wound, and the sanguisage lapped at it eagerly, only to be repelled by a substance so unlike the fresh blood it craved. Grimm spared it further disappointment with two slices, the first through its odious face -more out of spite than anything- and the second through its thigh to topple it. Then Grimm made his way over to the Gaster, leaping over the holes in the hollow’s floor. His delay meant he arrived just too late, however, and before he could dig in the Gaster unleashed an immense flash of painfully bright light. Blinded and stunned, Grimm staggered backward and into the hole behind him, barely managing to snag his claws on the edge in time to stop his fall. When his sight returned, his scarlet eyes blinked down at the flood-infested battleground hundreds of feet below, then up at Sectonia in a silent entreaty for help.
Sectonia herself using the fact this thing had fallen to the ground to summon her Antlers without chance of retaliation from its beam, Grimm dealing with and having some trouble with the minions below. With her own minions out helping to suppress them with Sectonia summoning a gold and 2 red Antlers to add areas of safety or to cleanse the area with fire, she was ready to start to deal something to this downed creature. Although that would wait as it didn’t remained stunned for long and flashbanged Grimm, causing him to stumble and almost fall through the gaps in the floor. A bit annoyed about the situation, Sectonia swooped down and hoisted Grimm back onto solid surface behind a red Antler who was using its flamethrower upon a thrall which flailed wildly as it was burned by magical fire.
Once hauled to safety, Grimm quickly rubbed the stars from his vision, offered Sectonia a wordless bow of gratitude, and then peered around for any sign of the Gaster. Thanks to its nasty surprise, the brood-watcher had gotten off relatively scott-free and floated back up into the hollow’s dark reaches, but it wouldn't be safe for long. With Antlers on deck to finish the fight Grimm started, the number of lesser sanguisuges continued to dwindle rapidly. The Troupe Master stood ready to repay the favor he owed Floralian queen.
While Sectonia tended to light up the darkness, Grimm was content to work with it. He darted around the battlefield for a few seconds before his scarlet eyes spotted a bulbous shape in the fetid gloom, anchored to the hollow walls by its hooked tentacles. The realization came just in time, as well, and as the Gaster’s high-pressure laser burst forth, Grimm teleported to safety. Three firebats screamed forth from beneath his cloak, followed by the Grimmchild, and the scarlet blaze cut the horror’s laser short.
Sectonia meanwhile was a bit more occupied summoning more minions to deal with the rabble, summoning another gold, another red, and two green to help clear things out. This lead to her paying a bit less attention with the main boss as Grimm was dealing with him, meaning she got blasted with its laser for the short while it was up before Grimm dealt with it. A disgusting, horrid thing that wasn’t very pleasant to get hit by and something that got her attention. Attention she’d pay in kind with it being on the ground again by teleporting next to it and conjuring a large ring of light and using it as a hula hoop, cutting into the creature as it stood there over and over.
Facing with a lustrous circle saw of punishment, the Gaster quickly attempted to reposition. It did not float away slowly, but stretched out two of its tentacles to a farther section of wall, and once they latched on it let go with the other two to snap away like a stretched rubber band. Now that it had invited Sectonia’s wrath, though, the grotesque sanguisuge found her nigh impossible to get rid of. She stuck to it like glue, unrelenting, and the damage quickly added up. And as if that wasn't enough, Grimm teleported up to join her, and with no qualms about physical contact he happily jumped on top of the Gaster itself. He awakened his cloak and plunged its tips into the horror beneath him, which burrowed in and then erupted outward as spikes. That vicious attack was more than enough to knock the Gaster down a second time, with Grimm along for the ride.
As the Seekers prepared to capitalize, however, the foulbloods reared their ugly heads once more. Several bloated thralls appeared covered in enormous, swollen ticks, which they plucked off and then threw at a rate of two per second to bounced toward their foes and explode. Worse were the two Jenu Giants, much tougher and bigger than their deformed cousins, with railroad spikes through their heads and enormous polearms in hand. They went after the Seekers, one for each bug, to stagger them and let the Gaster recover.
Seeing this, Sectonia commanded her currently summoned Antlers to intercept and deal with these things, or at least provide them a shield. Being the giants they were, this was a good order for the slow Gold antlers as they could impose themselves in between the Jenu Giants and the seekers to eat some of the exploding ticks to give them more time to deal damage to the Gaster. Their bulk let them take a good amount of hits until they finally exploded in a puff of magical smoke. Meanwhile Sectonia seeing that the Gaster was trying something new, decided to see exactly how damaged it was from their attacks by hitting it with lightning, before using her Reaper’s Scythe on it to inflict a fair amount of damage, only gauging how injured it was after the attack to get an idea of how close to death it was.
She’d need to eventually turn her attention to the Jenu Giants once her Gold Antlers went down, using her pipe of insight to give herself and Grimm a barrier that absorbed some of the explosion damage as she rained Swords across the battlefield to deal with these creatures.
Though clearly confident in her power and more than capable, Sectonia was wise enough to not get cocky. She gave the metal-studded newcomers their due diligence, but with her array of powers she did not spare the Gaster its punishment, either. Grimm joined in her efforts, making the most of the distraction provided by the Antlers to whale on the Gaster with his claws and spells. Unable to get away, the nightmarish thing could only try to endure, but its efforts were not enough. Together, the magic and might of the two bugs proved sufficient–perhaps even superfluous. Well before the Jenu Giants could overcome the Antler barricade, Grimm’s claws and Sectonia’s swords reduced the wretched Gaster to ichorous chunks, and after that the handful of sanguisuges that remained were of little consequence.
After scraping fluid from his claws, Grimm allowed his cloak to fall back into place over his body. His scarlet eyes peered around the hollow, taking stock of the destruction that he and Sectonia caused. He found many spirits, but as far as he could tell, nothing yet lived, save for the Qliphoth itself. Given just how far its cancerous infestation had spread, though, he couldn’t say how much longer for the world it was. One thing was clear: that he and his comrade would not find its overlord here. He cast his gaze to Sectonia. She had certainly demonstrated her abilities. ”Bravo. A splendid dance. Your fervor burns bright in the darkness.”
Before he could take another step though, the shadows closed in once more, but instead of bloodsuckers the insects found themselves presented with a selection of rewards. In front of Grimm loomed three choices: Dazzling Display, Auspicious Star, Volcano Spear. These things reminded him of badges, the trinkets worn by certain warriors to grant new powers in battle. He cared not for such baubles himself, but given his weakened abilities, perhaps certain concessions must be made. Grimm reached out to take hold of the Volcano Spear card. His talons close on nothing, and all three cards vanished, but when the hollow faded back in he found smoldering scarlet embers on his claws. ”I can feel it. The warmth of the flame. This searing fire…it carries well the Ritual’s promise.” After a moment he averted his gaze in order to begin the hunt for a path forward. ”Shall we press on?”
Sectonia was deciding on a choice of her own, between Wave of Despair, Catalyst, and Darkmagic Blade. She was taking a longer time than Grimm deciding on hers as she tried to figure out the general idea of each item. One would do something if she was attacked, one would buff her allies, and the last one would passively debuff her enemies. A tough choice all around… Although the middle one could lead to some scary Antlers perhaps. After thinking about it for a little bit, Sectonia decided to choose Catalyst. While it didn’t buff her directly, it offered a much stronger amount of power than the other two and an empowered gold Antler could be quite devastating.
”Yes. We still have to find the core of this abomination and snuff it out.” Sectonia said, giving Grimm a nod. The question was… where to go now? If nothing presented itself in a timely fashion, making their own way through the tree might be required.
Level 13 Blazermate (Holding 2 level up) - (78/130) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: less than 750
Blazermate was pretty neutral to the whole situation, as she was more just stuck healing people than doing much on the offense herself. She knew though that her shield didn't command these undead as they weren't actually zombies which made things a lot harder than it could've been. But her whole thing was to keep people up and overhealed alongside Sandalphon. The latter noticing that things were going south and found a way to progress, which involved going through the vessels of the tree? "Oh come on! I just cleaned myself and you want me to pain myself red? ugh... fine." Blazermate said, hopping into the same vessel as Ace and ending up in the same location.
Said location being fairly... clean and nice with this trees standards. Did she get lucky? Well, it was her and Ace and that was it, and well, a giant version of some of those things downstairs. This was a place she was good at though, and Ace would be healed at all times with this thing so hopefully the two of them could take it. As the creature got ready to attack, Blazermate summoned the engineer and got in defensive position behind Ace.
Roland
Level 6 Roland (40/60) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: Less than 750
Roland wasn't much for giant horde fights like this, he'd prefer smaller scale fights if possible. At least these creatures went down much, much easier than Sweepers, although considering how grotesque some of these things were he wondered where stuff like the sweepers or other horrors of the city would be? They could be somewhere else, and that was a horrifying thought. At least at the start of this fight, these small fries were easy. But soon their numbers thinned out, only to be replaced by stronger, smarter, bigger horrors.
Seeing how the fight was going downhill, even though Roland made it to Emotion level 4 attacking the small fries, getting Intemperance with a more regal tomboy voice saying "Is it so bad to lust for honey when there are flowers?", making it so that Roland couldn't lose every 4th clash. He also gained In the Name of Love and Hate EGO page.
With the more advanced creatures approaching, an idea came among the group. To get to other parts of the tree, why not use the blood vessels on the wall to get there? This wasn't a surprise to Roland considering where they were, and while he had his own reservations about them, he cut open and jumped into a vessel when some of the others did and was whisked away to another floor.
When he was pushed out of the vessel into another room, he found himself in a room with Edelgard, covered in blood he tried to shake off, and in the room was one other person. A giant zombie that looked like they were from District 9. "I guess we got split up. At least its only one thing... Think we got lucky and got the Guardian?" Roland said to his would be partner in this fight against Killabilly.
Sectonia
Level 12 Sectonia (holding 4 level up) (72/120) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: less than 750
At first, Sectonia made a nice protective area for her allies as the creatures coming for them were fairly weak and could be taken out with a mixture of electricity, dark lightning, and death pulses. But as the weaklings started to thin out, stronger, more durable, and craftier creatures began to swarm them making it look like there wasn't much of an end to any of this. It got even worse with ranged and air units being added into the mix, and seeing that it was unending and their goal was to just deal with the guardian, the other seekers figured out a plan.
Granted that plan involved going through the blood vessels of the tree to reach a different room and that was something Sectonia was NOT going to do. She had enough of that ugliness in the under, and this was going to be worse? No way. If the idea was to go to a different part of the tree to get away from the hordes rushing them, she'd rather find another way. A different way she found as she looked up and found a hole that lead to another room. She really didn't want to touch anything here if she could help it, and was also worried what else this tree held, but if she was going to cleanse this ugliness from her kingdom, she'd need to get to work.
Sectonia found herself in an adjacent chamber with one of the newer group members in an area that seemed to be for fliers only. And in front of her, what looked like the leader of those flying things she saw earlier. Perhaps if these were defeated, the amount of minions would stop spawning and thats how they got the guardian? A bit strange that it was only 2 of them here, but not much to go about it but wipe out this hideous thing.
Level 13 Blazermate (Holding 2 level up) - (77/130) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: less than 750
"Ew, I remember now why I hated this zone. And no fire to burn it!" Blazermate said as she saw all the appraoching creatures. A lot of the group was in the same boat as her, and it didn't take long for everyone to start attacking these things with their various abilities. Blazmermate spent her time healing everyone. She debated putting down a sentry gun, but seeing as the boss hadn't shown itself, they might have to go find it and she didn't want her spirit on cooldwon for that.
She did have a fun ability she could try though. Looking at Ganondorf being one of the heavy hitters, Blazermate cast Disruption on him. The king of darkness would vanish from the battlefield for a couple seconds as he was ingulfed in an orb of darkness before reappearing, but he wasn't alone. Two identical illusions of himself were next to him attacking and protecting him from the sickening creatures approaching him. They didn't have his abilities, but they did have a fair amount his immense strength. They were much weaker than him in the hp department too, but they added up to basically another Ganondorf. While following Blazermate technically, she'd let them follow his orders since he was the one near them, plus it'd probably make him like her more knowing she could do stuff like this now.
Roland
Level 6 Roland (39/60) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: Less than 750
"This is disgusting." Was all Roland could say about these creatures before he began to deal with them. Being one of the few in the group without really AoE, at least at the start, Roland tried to deal with whatever got close or tried to go after a creature that attempted to flank one of his allies. These creatures were a bit of a blessing in disguise for Roland though, as he could use their fairly weak stature to win clashes and up his emotion level, meaning he wouldn't start at a low level once the boss showed up.
Having started a battle in earnest, Roland remembered the Floor of Natural Science, and with winning his first clash got Love, A voice almost similar to Blazermate's, although not robotic saying "A true magical girl never runs away in the face of any hardships!". Probably a weird thing to hear come from Roland, although not from his own mouth like always. This let him heal whoever was the most damaged by any successful strikes he made for a little bit. As an infested... turtle? (Jr. would know it as a koopa) used its shell to try to dive him, Roland intercepted it with his hammer and knocked it away, the shell doing a LOT more damage than he was expecting to the enemy forces at it flew through them. "Uuuh... hope you didn't know him." Roland said to Jr, before moving to defend someone else.
He'd protect another ally the same way, and upon dicing up a creature made of mushrooms with his sword, he'd gain Emotion level 2 and that same voice spoke again, with Roland gaining Justice as it said "In the name of Love and Justice~ I have arrived!", making it so that now, whatever enemy had been doing the most damage to the group would have a clear indicator over its head marking it as a "villain", and anyone attacking it would do extra damage. Granted with how fast these creatures were dying, this symbol wouldn't appear for long but if his emotions held until the guardian, it'd help take that thing down.
Dealing with a few more creatures that got close, Roland reached emotion level 3, and with it, gained Magicial Girls, this time a feminine voice that sounded like a clown drowned in shadow said "Did you make me, or did I make you?", which had no apparent benefit to Roland for now. With how few creatures could beat Roland in a clash with their weak yet swarming tactics, it'd take a bit before its effect could trigger. He also gained the EGO page Gold Rush, something he'd probably use soon if they couldn't find out where to go next.
Sectonia
Level 12 Sectonia (holding 4 level up) (71/120) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: less than 750
Sectonia was relieved that the time rain wouldn't get them in this tree, dispelling her chaos shield in case it had some weird effects by shielding her from the time rain. Granted her worry about the time rain would soon be over as all the ugly creatures within the tree started to converge on the new intruders to the tree. These things, clearly, enraged Sectonia at how disgusting and hideous they looked and she wasn't the only one. Many of the rest of the group were appalled or disgusted, but her rage burned the brightest. A bright burning rage she turned into blasts of holy lasers and swords.
Thanks to her various items and the new death pulse spell and her own lightning, Sectonia had a bit of a "don't approach me" zone about her, dealing with anything that got close. Although while weak, these things were nearly infinite and just destroying them, as cathartic as it was, wouldn't be something that would get them anywhere. "We need to find the source of this disgusting tree and destroy it." Sectonia said, a bit unsure of where to go herself and instead offering an area for Jr. Rika, and anyone who wanted to stay away from these creatures to inhabit while they figured out where to go.
Level 13 Blazermate (Holding 2 level up) - (76/130) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: less than 750
Blazermate wasn't a nutranurse, so when BB mario started to cry, she was in the same boat as Goldweis in being at a loss to quiet him down. She was a field medic, not a nanny, and was just as annoyed at everyone else at how the BTs were summoned and started to mess with everyone by coming out of the ground and grabbing people. "Ew ew ew. Get off me!" Blazermate said as she tried to get these hands off of her. Ace got the worst of it though, or rather, was one of the ones that really shouldn't have been stuck by these things, but he was, and with that the emitter broke and they were now all on a timer before these shields wore out.
With it now being a dash to the end instead of a stealth job, Blazermate began to fly. And being one of the fastest members of the group, it wasn't too difficult for her to make it to the tree where she could help support anyone who got close. She'd help with the big BT distraction group, but she wasn't sure how she could help them with it seemingly taking no damage.
Roland
Level 6 Roland (38/60) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: Less than 750
Roland could only sigh at how some of the group split in such a stressful, serious situation. It slowed everyone down while some fought demons, some made their way to their destination, and some just went off from the emitter to explore a giant ship! Yeah there was probably some loot in there, but the time rain was way worse to deal with and not worth it. Although the thing that both annoyed and didn't surprise Roland was when one of the BBs decided that the stress was too much and made way more noise than everyone else had combined. Considering his own BB was calm as a cucumber, Roland was convinced that these things were just advanced androids or something for a fair amount of time. But seeing they were actual babies from this both disgusted Roland, and also made him sigh that this wasn't all that different from the world he knew.
That would have to wait though as this noise caught the attention of the BTs. Being one of the BB carriers, he could see them coming up from the ground. This made his own evasion of these things easier, but it was clear that some of the others weren't as agile. There wasn't a whole lot he could do but point things out until Ace fell over and smashed the emitter. Roland's personal shield triggered, meaning he was now on a time limit and he wouldn't want to lose his good looks to aging rain. While a bit slower than he normally was with his new spirits, he was still pretty fast and agile and on top of that, pulling out his paintbrush, he could give Ace an ink swirl to help him... assuming the ink could stun the BTs going after him. He'd be making his way to their destination though to get out of the rain and be safe.
Sectonia
Level 12 Sectonia (holding 4 level up) (70/120) Location: Dead Zone Word Count: less than 750
If it wasn't for her needing to move with the emitter and her worry about that, she'd help those in the pit killing the demons below. They were doing her work for her though, so she'd need to remember to reward them later for getting rid of such evil and hideous creatures. That would need to wait though as one of the BBs let out a lot of crying attracting the BTs. Being off the ground, it would be difficult for her to be grabbed by the BTs rising from the ground, but that wouldn't mean much as Ace fell and broke the emitter. Now was the time to move, but her preemptive chaos shield protected her like she thought it would... although she wasn't sure how long it would last as the rain drops smacked across the rainbow barrier with a ping and waver effect she got immediately worried about.
With their destination in sight though, her plan was simple. With only a little bit of worry on her face showing, she used her blink as fast and frantically as a distressed bee could to make her way to the tree and to safety. She'd only be able to help the others once she herself was safe and out of the rain with some support from her ground based swords in a futile attempt to try to slow down the BTs chasing everyone else.
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