Chapter 298: Lernaean, The Reformed Self Vs. Chosen of Aelia Pt. 2

“This is bullshit,” Zoey muttered as she stamped her foot down, squashing a wriggling current of blue lightning that tried to take a chomp out of her. It was a form of living magic that could straight up ignore her durability, unless she squashed them first, in which case they’d wriggle off only to reform.

“Agreed,” The First Monk said, sounding rather un-monk-like.

“ Yo, Rory, care to fix this shit?” Zoey spoke into her transmitter, and a response came a second later.

“ Let me wave my magic fucking wand. Oh, wait, I don’t have one of those.”

“Pretty sure you do,” Zoey shot back.

“ It’s a staff, you knuckle dragger,” Rory answered, as Zoey could almost imagine her long-time best friend rolling his eyes. “ In the meantime, just… don’t die or something.”

“He says ‘don’t die in the meantime,’” Zoey answered as she heard her sister sigh, one of the titanic serpent heads attempting to swallow her whole, only to be shoved aside by a perfectly placed shot from the Rogue.

“Don’t die. Wonderful plan,” The Spear muttered, but Zoey could distinctly hear the hint of excitement; a battle like this was rare for… well, any of them.

“Well, guess we’ve just got to follow orders,” Zoey snorted before slamming her fists down upon the ground, a curtain of magma erupting and splashing upon one of Lernaean’s heads, who shook like a stung dog.

Think, think, think, Rory. Best way to get rid of them?

His domain was already fully preoccupied with keeping Lernaean’s cannibalistic aural-consuming aura in check; he couldn’t afford to try to split it to siphon up the living lightning.

Actually… That might work.

“ Rogue, need a favor,” Rory spoke into his transmitter, a crackle responding a moment later.

“ Wassup? Can’t really go do a coffee run right now.”

“Drop your Singularity, and switch to ordinary Nightfall.”

“Uhh, that seems like a bad idea. I’m the only one keeping that big ass monster from snagging bites out of our melee triplets.”

“I’ll cover for that,” Rory answered back.

“You? Do you have anything as fast-firing and heavy-hitting?”

“Yes ,” Rory grimaced even as he said it, because ordinarily the answer was no . Projections lacked individual punch; Nathair was far from rapid fire, as were pretty much all of his attacks. But there was one newer attack that had the instant move speed needed, the punch to hurt, and the ability to be ‘spammed.’

“ Alright, if you say so. Want me to try to squash the lightning maggots?”

“Bingo,” Rory answered. Nightfall wasn’t a true domain, but it worked similarly for all intents and purposes and could even be used to squash enemy attacks, though not as effectively as Rory’s Liminal Realm, which was a true domain.

The environment, already hued in the field of Rory’s domain, darkened further as the Rogue intertwined his Nightfall within it. The living lightning that had been snapping at the heels of their melee fighters began to find itself constricted and squeezed out of existence. Which would have been wonderful, if not for the fact that the Hydra noticed the change almost instantly, no longer bombarded by the suppressing fire from the Rogue’s shadow weapon.

Freed from the suppressing fire, the hydra instantly went entirely on offense, rushing forward, its shadowy snake tendrils writhing in excitement, ready to tear apart any one of the three.

Only to recoil as a reality-cutting slash manifested upon one of its faces, partially shredding its eye and opening a massive, weeping wound across the serpentine face.

“Yeah, fuck ,” Rory grunted. The backlash hit almost as instantly as the attack itself, the baneful weapon greedily clawing him from the inside out as it ravenously consumed whatever errant pneuma, vital energy, anything it could get its ugly fangs into. Rory almost wondered who took more damage, the Hydra or himself .

Doesn’t matter.

Swiping the staff, any time the hydra attempted to catch one of the melee Founders, a reality-slash appeared atop it, inflicting wounds that refused to heal quickly.

Got to… keep it up.

His vision was blurring more than was probably healthy, and instantly, in his opposite hand, he retrieved three flasks and a small, ossified gem from his inventory. Tossing the gem back and chasing it with the three brews, Rory felt fortified.

For now, at least.

“Christ, this fucker just won’t die ,” Zoey said, amazed at just how much punishment the monster could take. Even laying into the fucker with the full might of World On Fire , it felt like she was barely scarring the thing. The Monk wasn’t any better, even slashing outward with his hands covered in ice like exotic blades, carving into its scales and severing the flailing shadow serpent tendrils; the wounds healed instantly .

The only one who seemed to be gaining any ground was The Spear, armed with the spear Rory had given her some time ago, which augmented her ability to bend and warp reality, refusing to let the wounds heal.

Well, that and Rory himself, those slashes that just kept appearing on the glorified worm refused to heal, almost seeming to widen and discolor with a purple ooze.

We need to flip the table.

Unlawfully taken from , this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Zoey knew a bit about what Rory was doing; his staff was adorned with the fragment that killed The Woodsman. Each of those slashes was channeling that moment, and by extension, allowing the full force of bane to strike him like a hammer from the inside. The damage was considerable, and given how much the hydra healed, she didn’t think Rory would win that battle of attrition.

Even two Founders had been enough to handle many territory alphas aside from the very strongest, and yet this fucker was taking the full force of all of them , and looking like he was going to come out on top.

Guess it's time to pull a Rory.

Stepping back just long enough to retrieve several brews and swallow them, Zoey felt her insides combust.

Well, ignoring the fact that she was technically already molten, as her body was composed of world ichor.

Several brews swishing around inside her, Zoey shot back into the fray, bringing her fists together overhead as they began to glow black, before shifting into a color without standard description, liquid and solid at the same time, before shifting even further , as everything inside her protested.

Not too surprising, as World On Fire was a technique that she’d never tried to use alongside Black Hole Drop, only sustained by essentially doping up in advance.

Lernaean sensed the attack and instead focused all three heads in her direction, opening its mouths as a green smog rushed outward, surprising all of them.

“Got you,” A voice said as she was suddenly pulled into the shadows, before reappearing above the hydra, the Rogue winking at her as he vanished a moment later. With Nightfall active, it was easy to forget that he was once more free to teleport extremely easily, on par with Rory’s own flicker, but at a fraction of the cost.

Above the hydra that was spewing smog at no one in particular, Zoey let her body crash down, falling like she was a source of her own major gravity.

Which she was , but that was semantics.

“ Supernova!” The Vanguard shouted, not having had any real time to workshop anything cleverer. Slamming down on the closest of the serpent heads, the world seemed to warble, space-time momentarily shrieking as she indwelled a conceptual mass that reality couldn’t separate from real mass.

All of that was to say that, by all intents and purposes, the literal weight of an entire planet appeared for a single instant, crushing the serpent’s head before extinguishing itself a moment later, as the resulting space fluctuation launched Zoey far away.

Landing unceremoniously, far removed from the battleground, The Vanguard couldn’t even manage a groan. Her body was broken , utterly spent, every bone shattered, and her form returned to flesh and blood. If not for the sword-steel moss that had integrated itself within her flesh so many years ago, she was pretty sure she would be little more than a smear on the ground.

“Noted,” Zoey managed to spit out.

Before blacking out.

Zoe!

For a single moment, Allison felt a surge of panic as she saw… whatever the fuck her sister had just done. To her, all that had occurred was that her sister had stepped back, thrown back some brews, and then a sound of shrieking metal rang out to her ears, what she now understood as her own interpretation of the fabric of spacetime freaking out under a sudden strain. The hydra had instantly pivoted onto her sister, but before Allison could even think of rushing to her side, she’d vanished into the green smog.

Except she hadn’t. Appearing above the hydra, she felt every one of her senses scream that it wasn’t a person she was looking at, but a literal falling planet .

And then she’d, in a single attack, managed to completely crush one of the hydra heads before being launched hundreds of miles away.

Allison wanted to rush to her sister, but there was a time and a place, and abandoning her duty now would only ensure death.

There was a moment when it felt as if they were all holding their breath, waiting for the hydra to do hydra things and regenerate its head, but for once, they got lucky; the mangled stump that had once been adorned by an oversized snake's head remained a mangled stump.

“ Don’t let up,” The Architect barked over the broadband transmission. “ We’re down a man, but it’s down a head!”

The temporary fugue was lifted as Allison threw herself forward, heart thumping with rage and concern for her sister. The sooner they could put the monstrosity down, the sooner she could find her. At the very least, no one was more durable than Zoe.

“ Good news, folks, I finished squashing the pests.”

The darkness of Nightfall that had intermingled with the Architect’s domain suddenly lifted, the lightning that had been trying to nip at their feet gone. What did return was the snap of tracer rounds of pure darkness that shot through the air and slammed into the Hydra.

“ Tagging out for a moment, ” The Architect huffed. The reality slashes he’d used clearly had taken a lot out of the man, an attack she’d never seen before now, only described in rather vague terms regarding their pre-battle planning.

Taking advantage of the Rogue rejoining the battle with his suppressing fire, the slashes stopped appearing atop the monster. With the loss of one of the heads, for the first time in the battle, it seemed as if they were making genuine progress.

So, of course, that was when the hydra decided to speak up.

“ Vvvenom the World.”

The aura that had been held back so well by the Architect’s domain until now suddenly swelled, then exploded outward as every single one of the floating obelisks shattered simultaneously.

The effect was instant; Allison felt as if she were plunged into a horrific smog while also swimming through acid and having lava injected into her veins.

“ My turn to tag out,” Allison heard the Monk say from farther away. “ Make good use of this.”

Uncertain what the man meant, she suddenly felt like a cold wind whipped outward, pushing back the horrific aura.

“ Form Zero Crescendo: Final Frozen Stillness.”

Every ounce of frozen stillness the man had stored within his body, alongside every ounce of his aura and strength, flashed outward in an instant, the frozen field freezing the hydra’s aura in place.

Cleared of the smog, Allison had just enough time to see Tom flash her a two-finger salute.

“See you on the other side of victory.”

And then the man seemed to flash-freeze, locked in a state of stasis.

“ Yeah, so, you’re going to have to tag back in, ready or not,” Allison heard Eric snap over the transmitter, not even bothering to switch to a ‘private’ channel.

With only one melee fighter left and two Hydra heads, they lunged forward together, seizing their chance to end the battle. With the melee frontline's downfall, there would be nothing to hold the serpent back from pursuing either the Architect or the Rogue.

“ No rest for the wicked,” The Architect sighed, a clearly forced sigh pretending to be lackadaisical.

“ Sidereal Cage!”

The shattered obelisks seem to float back up before turning into red dust that races toward the hydra, sinking into its flesh and completely ignoring any resistance.

“ Sidereal Brand!”

Upon the ‘chest’ of the hydra, a red constellation seemed to glow, fading a moment later.

“ The final part of the sequence needs a physically prepared rune array on the ground, so I can’t launch it yet,” The Architect said through the transmitter. “ So, we’re going to have to borrow time.”

“Doesn’t this shit burn you up too?” The Rogue asked.

“ Yes, so let’s not fuck around,” The Architect snapped, his voice no longer able to hide the strain he was under. “ Hurry.”

Like a signal sent out, in an instant, Allison was no longer the sole front-line fighter. The Rogue had appeared at her side, swapping from the sniper form of his shadow weapon to his classic glaive. To her other side, the Architect had appeared, armed with a shield and a nasty-looking one-handed axe, clearly designed for butchering tough opponents.

“Phase two,” The Architect said, the edge in his voice obvious. “Ready?”

“Fuck ‘em snakes,” The Rogue barked with a harsh snort.

Allison nodded. They were hardly the allies she trusted the most, but for the moment, she found herself grinning wolfishly.

“Time to tear the fucker apart.”