noct
patreon
339. The Final Blow
🕑 Added 2025-03-21 14:00:08 +0000 UTCMag’s spell hurtled toward the beast. Glowing brightly, trailing streaks of mana behind it, the bolt rushed toward the lone figure. Suddenly abandoned by Ike and Wisp, the beast watched them go, then looked up. The glowing blue ball closed in on it, rapidly eclipsing its sky.
It was too late to flee, and the ball moving too fast to think. The beast threw its hands up, opposing the spell with its body.
The blue ball smashed into its hands and exploded. The sound alone was enough to shatter one of the second-layer stone petals, and the earth shook from the force of the blast, kicking up like a ship at high sea. Ike stumbled back as the shockwave slammed into him, forced to retreat a few steps. Opposite him, Wisp braced herself against the wall. Aether raged, rebounding across the entire expanse within the stone rose. It cut deep lines into the stone, lashing wildly across the arena. The lines of aether slammed into Ike, and he was forced to circulate Storm Clad faster to prevent them from cutting him open, too.
Destructive power burrowed into the beast, and into the floor all around it, too. The second it struck, a great cloud of dust rose up from the ground as the spell absolutely destroyed the earth all around the beast. From within the dust, the beast roared. A pained sound? Ike leaned forward, uncertain. He couldn’t see anything beyond the dust. It was as though the dust was the end of the world, a curtain that blocked off everything beyond. He extended his senses, but the raging power of the spell prevented him from sensing anything going on within it.
“Did he do it?” Wisp shouted.
Ike threw his hands up. He had no idea. If Wisp couldn’t sense anything either, then that made two of them. The inside of the dust ball might as well have been on the other side of the world, for all the more insight he had into its contents.
Hovering in the air, Wisp frowned. He looked at his hand. “I definitely hit him.”
“I don’t think anyone’s doubting that,” Wisp remarked without missing a beat.
Ike’s heart sank. That wasn’t a statement that came without a caveat, especially the way Mag said it. “You definitely hit him, but… what?”
“I… don’t know. It doesn’t feel right,” Mag said, frowning. “It feels like, even if I destroy him, I can’t kill him.”
Ike’s heart sank even further. An unspoken fear, one that had lingered in the back of his mind all this time, returned to the forefront. He pressed his lips together, unwilling to accept it, even as it made more and more sense in his mind. But why wouldn’t it be the case? It had been the case when he was weaker, so why would it stop applying now? “Don’t tell me. Is he just as unkillable as he was when he was fragile?”
“Oh man. Don’t say that,” Wisp groaned. “We’ll be here forever. Literally.”
“There has to be a way to defeat him,” Ike muttered, half to himself. Physical attacks barely damaged the beast, and even if magical ones damaged it deeply, it gave Mag the feeling that it wouldn’t keep it down. Normally, he would have waited for the dust to clear, but right now, he felt that same ominous sensation as well; not to mention, the puppet had demonstrated thousands of times that it could return from dust. If Mag, the only one who could sense what was going on in his spell, felt like the beast would survive it, then they needed to spend this time to come up with a plan.
But what do we do? How? The King came to mind, but he immediately dismissed it. It was powerful, but unpredictable and uncontrollable, before he even brought up how this was his attempt to control it. He couldn’t use it. It simply didn’t make sense.
He’d used Lightning Caller on it already, and managed to injure its dust form, but not kill it. He’d used Storm Clad, but his empowered blows had bounced off. He hadn’t used any of his lightning-powered strikes yet, but since they were weaker than lightning caller, he doubted they’d be of much use. What did that leave? His brows furrowed. He had some skills he hadn’t used in a while, like Tempest or Exsanguination, but Tempest, while one of his stronger magic-based attacks, was weaker than the one Mag had launched, and Exsanguination, a skill that expelled blood, seemed out of place against a foe with no blood. What did he have? What could he do, that could actually injure this thing?
No, wait. I’ve already got my answer. It’s a shitty answer, but it’s an answer. Ike’s expression turned grim. He was in this for the long run. There wasn’t a quick, one-hit answer, but if he had any kind of answer, it was better than nothing.
“What’s up? You look like you just bit a lemon,” Wisp asked, right in his ear.
Ike flinched, then whirled. The stone petal she’d been perched on was empty, and additionally, there was no one close to him. Dread sunk into him. She’s back in spider form, isn’t she.
“Hey there, Ikey boy. You guessed right! I’m right here, all close and cozy.” An extremely light touch feathered against his earlobe, and Ike flinched again.
“Oh gods,” he muttered.
“What? It’s just your old friend Wisp.”
“That makes it worse.” Ike raised his hand and pointed, ending this conversation. “I think I know how to kill him.”
“Oh yeah? How?” Wisp asked, curious.
“Lightning Caller. It’s the only skill that did serious damage to him so far,” Ike pointed out.
“But you get badly injured afterwards, and it only worked in his dust form.”
“Right. So we need to pulverize him to dust, then hit him with Lightning Caller.”
“And he was only weakened, not killed.”
“So we repeat it until he dies.”
Wisp went silent. Ike couldn’t see her, but he had a strong feeling that she, too, had just bitten a lemon.
At last, she said: “I don’t like that.”
“Yeah, me either.”
“I wouldn’t imagine you do.”
A shared sigh. Ike clapped. “Enough resting. Back at it.”
“You got it, boss.”
With that, the two of them stepped toward the dust cloud, even as aether still tore into it.
