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277. Big Hits!
🕑 Added 2025-01-12 15:00:12 +0000 UTCThe claw skated across the land, throwing up earth and shrubs before it, trailing charcoal and embers after. It hurtled toward Ike, preparing to cut him off.
Ike gritted his teeth and hopped directly into the air. As the hand passed under him, he dropped down toward it. The heat of the arm beat toward him, already baking his feet before he even landed on it. But if he wanted to hit a vital point, the easiest way was to run up its arm to its neck. He wasn’t going to let a little bit of pain scare him away from giving this thing the biggest blow he possibly could.
The heat grew more intense the closer he fell. The edges of his clothes and the ends of his hair ignited. The second he touched down, the soles of his shoes burned to ash. The fire immediately began eating at his feet, and his skin crisped and burned away.
Fighting the urge to scream, Ike swallowed his pain and activated Body Reforging Art instead. The art activated, and his feet began healing almost as fast as they burned. But the burning still won. In a few moments, he couldn’t feel the bottom of his feet anymore, and not in a good way.
Ike gritted his teeth and ran. His speed was lower than usual, since he had to thump his feet down like the dead chunks of meat they were. He surged the Body Reforging Art to his feet, and held the image of his steel hands in his mind. Make my feet steel. Steel might melt, but it melts at a higher temperature than the human body burns!
The art churned. His aether burned as it healed his feet. He ran on, thumping along. As he ran, the art worked. His feet began to transform. First, a thin covering of steel, which seared the flesh under it like steak on a grill. Then a thicker coating, which still transferred the heat. Ike grimaced. At this rate, he’d just pull the heat higher.
I need them to be steel so they won’t burn, but I also need something to vent the heat. But what?
His eyes widened. No! He was being foolish. Relying only on Body Reforging Art was a mistake. He had so many techniques. He didn’t need to just use one skill when he could combine skills for the desired result. He activated the ice and sleet parts of Storm Clad and directed them at his ankles, as Body Reforging Art turned his feet into steel. Heat coursed up his feet into his ankles, but then it was lashed by the gales of Storm Clad. The heated metal cooled almost as rapidly as it heated. Aether flew into his two skills. Body Reforging Art sucked aether as it finished reforging his feet, and Storm Clad chewed through his aether as he surged it to keep his metal feet at a comfortable temperature at their top.
At the same time, he closed in on the monster’s throat. From all other directions, his companions also closed in on the figure. Wisp swung in on a spider’s thread, tossing it behind her and flying in as it caught alight despite her fireproofing. Rufus flew in on a broom, its bristles alight. Scar leaped from nearby high ground, her body swollen with muscle. All four of them hurtled toward the figure’s neck.
Scar reached first. She hammered the monster’s neck with an over-the-head hammer blow, a knife clenched in her fists. She tore a gash open, and a gout of white-hot molten lava spewed out. Clinging on, she ducked away from the gout and kept cutting.
Rufus struck next. A wave of sword energy lashed into the monster. The lava gouted, only for Rufus to finish it up with a second strike. The cut widened. Lava poured down the monster’s throat and chest. It lifted its hands toward its throat.
“Nope!” Wisp threw out a series of thick webbing ropes. The ropes bound the monster’s arms to its body, keeping it from closing off access to its neck. Even with the fireproofing she’d attached to her thread, it still began to burn immediately, but more slower than it would usually.
Ike reached the neck. He drew back his hands and unleashed a strike fully empowered by Storm Clad. At the same time, he activated Lightning Caller, Shockwave Punch, and Hammer Sword. Lightning lashed down and surged through Storm Clad, empowering his blow. The lightning coursed through the lightning already dancing around Ike and flew through him without harming him, only to hammer into the monster’s throat. He pushed as much of the power as he could into his arms and his sword. The Hungry Sword sang in happiness and sawed through the figure’s neck. Lava poured over him and the sword. His Body Reforging Art surged again, climbing steel up his forearms, then over his elbows and up to his shoulders. His aether poured out of his core.
He’d never used so much aether at once, in one strike. Even when he’d put his all into strikes before, he hadn’t been this strong, this able to absorb aether, nor recently fully recharged directly from a mana vein.
And it worked. He tore through the figure’s throat and kept going, charging across its chest while dragging its sword through its neck behind him. His feet slammed into its collarbone as he ran sideways toward the other side of its neck. Lava spewed behind him, pouring redoubled over its chest. Where Rufus had already cut open, the Hungry Sword dug deeper, flaying the injured flesh. Lava splashed under Ike’s feet, clinging to his steel toes. Scar saw him coming and jumped back. He charged in, connecting the deep gash she’d cut to the long slice.
Ike slowed and turned back. The entire front of the monster’s throat hung open. Its magma blood flowed out, coursing down its chest, pouring into the gaps in its flesh only to waterfall out another gap lower on its body. It broke free of Wisp’s binds, but only gripped at its throat. Slow as an avalanche, it fell to its knees, then slowly drooped forward.
Ike hopped away. Scar jogged to his side. Wisp crawled over on a thread, and Rufus hovered at shoulder height atop his broom. They watched the figure die, all of them holding their breath, an unspoken question on their lips—
Is it over?
