System Change

Seeing Silvi disappear into his Time Prison to take a break was Derek’s cue to unleash his currently held attack. Avery, on the other hand, had never let up with his own attacks. Even while the beast was being engulfed in Silvi’s fires, he was loosing drill shot after drill shot at it. If those arrows hit and actually did any damage, or if they even made it through the flames, Derek didn’t know.

Derek rushed forward through the smoke and into the slowly calming fire. He didn’t know what he was rushing into, but he needed to act quickly. He swung a void infused Harbinger down at full force with his right arm and shot out a Void Lightning Bolt with his left hand.

Just after his attacks landed, the smoke and flames were pushed away from above, and Derek felt pressure falling onto him. He looks up only to see a rapidly advancing shadow in the sky. At first, he thought Vanessa was doing something else with her shadows, but then he realized that the silhouette he was seeing was that of an enormous ball-peen hammer crashing down onto the beast, and thus, him.

Once again, Derek made his retreat as quickly as he could with Active Void Shift. He appeared back a distance away from the smoke only to see a hammer the size of the beast itself falling onto the smoky area. A loud crash rang out as Tyron’s hammer hit home and pounded into the creature.

Derek hadn’t been able to see the lion he’d hit for all the smoke, so he still didn’t know what state it was currently in. There was no way he would believe that the beast wasn’t hurting. From above, Avery kept releasing arrow after arrow, and drinking potion after potion. Since this was the final fight, the archer didn’t look like he was going to hold anything back.

Suddenly, Derek felt a warmth flow over his body. Turning to look at the Time Prison, he saw Elena and Kieron standing just outside of it, casting their buffs over the fighters in the party. He nodded at them, then they disappeared back into the Time Prison. That skill really is a cheat, he thought.

Derek looked up at where Silvi had originally been, and taking her place was Cain Ibarra. At the moment, he was channeling his own flames and wind. Then, he unleashed the wind backed flames down at the beast. Everyone was truly going all out.

From the side, Victor clapped his hands together, and Derek felt the ground move. He didn’t know what the man did, but it had to have been some form of an attack on the beast. Derek slipped into Greater Meditation to keep his reserves refreshed, and began firing bolt after bolt of void lightning at the beast. Something had to give—he was in utter shock that they had yet to receive a kill notification, and a sense of urgency was slowly filling his body.

Finally, out of nowhere, the flames produced by Cain appeared behind Avery. Luckily, Avery was fast, and avoided being hit by them by the skin of his teeth. Cain stopped his skills, and the fires vanished.

Then, a roar came from the charred area—a roar that held within it a great amount of pain, but even more rage and anger. A pulse of midnight blue energy shot out from the beast, and all traces of smoke and fire were blown away in an instant.

For the first time since Silvi’s attack, Derek got a good look at the Starfury Leonarus. The lion’s formerly beautiful mane was completely missing, and scorch marks littered its body. The previously prideful lion had turned into a burned, hairless cat. But Derek wouldn’t take the beast lightly. On top of the charred flesh, small punctures adorn the top of its body.

Apparently, Avery’s arrows were doing something. Derek focused on the wounds, and he could see a very small amount of blood dripping out of each one. Each singular attack may not have been doing much, but with them all combined, the damage and blood loss should surely add up.

Tyron’s hammer strike had knocked the beast even further into the softened, heated ground, as the monster was buried halfway up his body. Well, the ground was now neither soft nor heated. It clicked with Derek that Victor had taken control of the ground after Tyron stopped his heating of the metals inside it and packed it in. This caused the ground to harden around the beast.

There were also some earthen spikes surrounding the lion, but they hadn’t penetrated the beast. They lay broken around it. Because the beast was being held by the earth, Vanessa, wherever she was, moved her shadows around the beast’s neck and was attempting to strangle it after finding that the shadows couldn’t puncture its skin.

Derek would give anything if the raid boss had a red health bar floating above its head. He needed to know how injured the thing actually was. He was also surprised that the beast hadn’t teleported away from Silvi’s attack or out of its constraints. There were only a couple of reasons for that. The first was that its skill was still on cooldown from using it earlier. The second, and the one Derek hoped for, was that it couldn’t teleport while it was being constrained.

Whether that was because of Vanessa’s shadows or Victor’s earth, Derek didn’t know. Still, he hoped that those were the reasons it wasn’t teleporting.

For some reason, out of everyone who had attacked it, and the variety of damage that had been cause, the Starfury Leonarus seemed to only have eyes for Derek. Even with Avery’s shots still drilling into it, the lion didn’t react to them. Instead, it turned its head and looked directly at Derek. It was like it was on a mission or something.

One thing was for certain, though, the playful appearance that its face had before was completely gone—replaced with a look of fury. The beast finally broke contact with Derek and tilted its head down toward the ground, then took a deep breath in through its nose. Then, almost instantly, its head shot up toward the sky and it released a roar unlike anything Derek had heard before.

The already taught muscles all over its body grew in size—the massive beast growing even larger. The shadows wrapping around its neck broke off and dissipated one by one. Avery’s arrows, now aimed at the maw of the beast, disintegrated before they reached flesh. Soundwaves caused by nothing more than the force of the roar hit Cain, who everyone thought was out of attack range, and sent him tumbling through the sky.

And to top it all off, the ground where the beast had been stuck in began to crack and shatter. The beast raised its front right paw and sat it down on solid ground before doing the same with its front left one. Then it began pulling the back of its body out of the rubble. Soon, its back left paw was free and moving to a stable position. Finally, it started lifting its back right leg, but momentarily paused when the ground beneath it starting shaking.

Derek looked over at Victor, but the elven man looked as confused as he did. The next instant, another beast almost as big as the Leonarus itself shot out of the ground underneath it. The beast was an earthen color with waves of red flowing through its body. It was Rocky, and he had changed himself into a gigantic form to join the battle.

Seemingly understanding that it had the size, but not the power, Rocky didn’t go straight for the lion. Instead, its maw came up directly underneath the other beast’s leg—the one that wasn’t completely free yet—and swallowed it whole. Then, Rocky clamped down and began shaking its head furiously until the lion’s leg was ripped free of its body.

The Starfury Leonarus released a pained roar, then swiped back with one of its remaining silver claws, connecting directly with Rocky’s back. Bright blood spewed from the wyrm, causing him to release a pained cry and dive back into the earth. Derek could only assume that Rocky went back to his small form, as other than when the wyrm dived into the earth initially, he couldn’t feel any vibrations coming from the ground.

Derek’s eyes focused on the area where the beast’s leg used to be. It was leaking blood profusely, but right in front of his eyes, it was regrowing. At the pace he was seeing, the beast would regrow its leg in mere minutes—Derek didn’t even know that was possible.

He wasn’t the only person who laid eyes on the scene, though. As Derek watched the leg regrow, he saw a swirl of water wrap around it, then move faster and faster until it vanished. What was left was a partially regrown stump. Derek looked back at the door to his Time Prison and saw the back of Walter disappearing back inside. He had healed the leg before it had a chance to regrow.

This lost them the damage that would have been caused by the blood loss while it regrew, but it gained them the possibility of the beast having decreased mobility. It was a good tradeoff, in Derek’s mind. But just as Derek thought things were really taking a turn for them, the lion had a different idea.

Small pulses of midnight blue aura began flowing out of its body with each heartbeat. The sky darkened around the battlefield as it seemed like stars were pulled forward—closer and closer. Everyone laid into the beast with their best attacks, trying to stop whatever it was preparing, but nothing seemed to work. As the surroundings darkened, more and more small specks of light began to appear around them.

Then the destruction began. Each star shot forward at an unbelievable speed—some going after Avery and the others, but most aiming directly for Derek. In order to not be maimed, Derek used Void Shift back to back, over and over. He used the skill so much that he actually had to break out some of his mana potions and chug them.

The stars didn’t just shoot straight at a target, then dissipate. No, if they missed, they looped back around and continued their chase. Derek allowed the stars to chase him, though. He moved further and further away from the battlefield with the stars right on him—dodging by mere inches with Void Shift. When he was far enough away, he pushed Void Sense as hard as he could, then appeared directly underneath the beast with Harbinger gripped firmly in his hands.

The beast was concentrating hard, directing its skill, so it was only able to pull some stars off of the others and launch them at him. But Derek had already thrust a nearly fully void channeled Harbinger directly into the beast’s torso, backed by both Sweeping Slash and Multi-Strike. This time, there was no shot the beast could dodge or redirect his attack.

His attack landed just as the stars landed on Derek. The first softball-sized star hit him at the base of his right knee, shattering it and taking most of his flesh with it as it blinked out after the hit. The second almost took him at the hip, but a quick summon of Absolute Nullify on the ground was enough to pull it off course and cause it to miss. The same happened for the third star, but it didn’t miss completely. Instead of hitting Derek directly in the chest, the magnetic effect of his nullify skill caused it to veer down and hit the bottom of his left leg—completely removing his entire foot in the process.

But Derek was willing to make the trade. After being hit by the stars, he knew he was the only one would would be able to take them head on and survive. Well, Avery and his endurance may allow him to survive as well, but he would still be much worse off than Derek. But Derek was the only one who would be able to trade such a blow with the beast.

Speaking of which, Derek looked up. In the background, the starry sky began flickering—light shone through one second, and darkness covered the area the next. Next, a massive amount of liquid poured out of the lion’s mouth, and Derek took a deep breath in. Did that do it?