System Change

Derek’s attention was drawn to the distant sky where each star created by the Starfury Leonarus began to blink out, one by one. While he was distracted by the slow loss of power of the beast’s skill, the others in his party were not. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur speed by, then, as he followed the movement, he saw Avery appear on the beast with his daggers in hand.

Avery thrust each dagger into an already weakened part of the flesh of the beast—knowing that it would be hard to make fresh wounds with his close attacks, the archer chose to cut into the portions of the monster that his Drill Shots had already cut open. To Derek, it looked like Avery was trying to save some of his stamina while still inflicting as much damage as he could. It was a good strategy—especially since they didn’t know how much more damage the beast would be able to soak up.

With Avery attacking the beast, Derek broke out of his daze. Even though he knew it wasn’t much, he shot out a Void Lightning Bolt—directly behind where his Sweeping Slash had landed. Following his attack, earthen spikes appeared from the ground around him and shot up toward the beast with staggering force. Instead of hitting the monster and breaking, this time they struck with precision—the tip of each spike landing on an already vulnerable area of the beast’s flesh. It seemed that Victor had taken after Avery and traded quantity with quality with his attacks.

Derek wished he could get a good look at the massive beast’s face just to see how much light was left in its eyes, but his position underneath the beast was just too much to pass up. If he could continue underneath it until his major skills came off of cooldown, he would be able to inflict another major injury on it. So, getting a good look into the creature’s eyes just wasn’t currently possible if he wanted to stay in his current position.

He was, however, growing more and more confident in their combined attacks as the rays of light slowly crept in and the range of the starry night sky above them diminished. If the beast wasn’t in good enough shape to keep its skill active, even if it wasn’t on the verge of dying, the fact that the skill was disappearing showed that it was at least weakening.

By continuing their onslaught of attacks, they would surely whittle the creature’s health down, bit by bit. The Starfury Leonarus may have been a beast from another system or world, or even something else entirely, but with their combined might, unless the monster was overwhelmingly strong and was just toying with them, Derek didn’t believe they would be defeated.

At this point, Derek had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use his trump card. Feeling that it was the perfect time, and he was in the perfect position, Derek gripped Harbinger tightly and inspected the durability of the weapon. It hadn’t lost a lot, but just over twenty durability had disappeared from the glaive due to his attacks on the otherworldly beast and its high endurance.

He wouldn’t be able to keep the skill active long, but Material Drain should be able to cause a massive amount of damage in the short time it would take to repair itself with the beast’s material. With both hands gripping Harbinger, Derek willed the repair skill to activate.

Slowly, the skill formed into that of a small, deep purple ball on the end of Harbinger’s blade. With a deep breath, Derek thrust his weapon upward—into the chest of the beast. If he could take out its heart in one go, that would be for the best.

Derek focused on the end of his blade as he waited for Material Drain to begin and the flesh of the beast to vanish and be used as fuel to fix his glaive. However, as seconds passed, and with him applying more and more pressure, the area covered by the deep purple ball at the end of his blade never moved forward, and the flesh never disappeared.

Derek examined Harbinger once again and frowned. Not only had the beast not been hurt by Material Drain, but Harbinger hadn’t gained a single point of its durability back during its use. In fact, Harbinger’s durability had actually decreased by a single point.

Derek cursed inwardly and put every bit of strength he could muster into pushing his glaive into the beast. Still, it showed no signs of working. What the hell is going on? Doesn’t the description say that it works on ANY material? It worked just fine on that big fish and even the materials from the wyvern. Why isn’t it working on this asshole?

With a curse, Derek withdrew Material Drain and charged up another of his normal void channeled attack in combination with a Void Lightning Bolt. The attacks, even in combination, wouldn’t do fatal damage to the creature, but surely they would cause some harm. Maybe they would even help keep the beast stationary long enough for Multi-Strike to come off cooldown.

As he attacked, he wondered why Material Drain wasn’t working. He didn’t know if it wasn’t functioning properly due to the monster not being from the Great System, or if it was because the beast was a higher tier than Harbinger. If he had to guess, he would go with the latter.

Harbinger may have been a legendary weapon, but after seeing the notification that appeared from the other system when the Starfury Leonarus was being summoned, he was pretty sure that the beast was either mythical rank or very close to it. Material Drain not being able to work on living beasts of mythical rank would just make sense.

Derek’s brows furrowed as he unleashed another attack on the beast’s sternum. Even though he and the others were hitting it with everything but the kitchen sink—well, Derek’s kitchen sink proved ineffective—the lion hadn’t moved or attacked. In fact, it had been just over a minute since Derek’s main attack landed, and the stun surely should have worn off by now, but the beast still hadn’t moved an inch. Other than its chest moving in and out, the rest of its body was basically static.

Why would anything stay this still for this long and just let its enemies attack? With that thought, a feeling of dread came up from nowhere and washed over his body. Trying to find what was causing the strange occurrence, Derek ventured another peek at the sky. What he saw caused him to curse.

If the stars had continued disappearing at the rate they were before, they would almost be completely gone by now, and there would most likely not be anymore darkness covering the sky, he thought as he surveyed the scene. The disappearance of the stars had slowed dramatically in the dozen or so seconds he’d looked away from the sky.

But more and more light still made its way through the darkness. What the hell is this thing playing at? The dread that came before grew even stronger as he tried to figure the beast out. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the beast was… oh, no! It’s using Greater Meditation, or at least Meditation, to tank everything, isn’t it? Dammit! With a thought, Derek disappeared from under the belly of the beast and appeared directly above it—looking down on its face. Sure enough, the eyelids of the beast were shut, and it was breathing calmly.

Dammit! Derek plunged a void infused Harbinger down directly into the center of one of the beast’s eyes, but it didn’t seem to have any effect, and the beast kept with its peaceful breathing. Is this what it’s like to fight me? For an instant, he felt sorry for some of his opponents. What the hell am I supposed to do?

Derek went through his entire list of skills—even the ones he hadn’t bothered using in a long time—ones like Chain Lightning. But no matter the skill, he couldn’t see any of them helping them out of their current situation. Chain Lightning not being from his class, or just a physical attack he could use his buffs on, killed its attack power. Before, he hadn’t really understood why, but now, he knew a bit about affinity—and his was for the void, not lightning.

He did, however, use Void Creation to dig in and replace his foot and stem the flow of blood a bit. He kept the wound from closing or healing with Void Creation so his high vitality wouldn’t accidentally close it up and leave him with a permanent stump.

The only people out of the bunch who seemed to be able to do any kind of substantial damage to the beast were Avery, Silvi, and himself when his cooldowns were finished. Unfortunately, Avery looked to be running low on stamina potions, and he hadn’t seen Silvi since she disappeared into the Time Prison to regenerate her mana.

Currently, it was a race whether they could output more damage than it could heal. ‘Silvi! Are you finished regenerating you mana yet?’ he asked his companion. If they were going to win this fight, they needed her.

‘Uh… yeah… I am, but…’ she answered, but she seemed hesitant about something.

Derek didn’t have time to deal with whatever she was hesitant about. ‘We need your offensive power,’ he said.

‘Mhm,’ she gave a non-committal answer.

‘Silvi! We need your help!’ He half shouted inwardly at Silvi as he swung Harbinger down at the beast’s forehead once again. He was doing his best to disrupt the beast’s Meditation with his attacks. If nothing else, maybe he could slow its healing process by a bit.

‘Shut up! I’m busy!’ Silvi’s reply threw him for a loop. He wasn’t expecting her to get testy with him, especially not in the middle of such a big fight.

‘You’re bus—’ he tried to ask, but was cut off by his companion.

‘I said shut up! Busy!’

“Dammit!” Derek shouted as he swung his glaive over and over at the beast’s skull.

Once again, with Derek out from under the beast, the ground grew around it—trapping it inside just above its legs. Victor was doing what he could to keep the beast tied up, just in case it decided to break out of its trance and attack.

‘What’s going on?’ Avery’s voice came through via Telepathy.

‘The fucker’s meditating,’ Derek replied. ‘It looks like no matter what we do, its regeneration is able to keep up with our damage. On top of that, I don’t know what the hell Silvi’s up to.’

‘I see,’ Avery replied. ‘How long until you can do that big attack again?’

‘Not long,’ Derek sent. ‘But it won’t matter if it’s already healed itself past where it was before my last one landed.’

‘If we need to retreat, are you confident in keeping yourself alive if the others have to move into your space?’ Avery asked. His tone was serious, without a hint of the usual fun he had during fights. If he was making plans for retreat, the situation was even worse than he thought.

‘I am. I also have a way to get out of here if an escape scroll won’t work. Though I’m unsure what it will do to everyone else.’

‘That will be our last resort,’ Avery said.

‘Got it,’ Derek replied. ‘Until then, we need to keep at it. Maybe it’s more injured than we think.’

With that, Derek attacked again, and Avery changed his fighting style back to his bow, but continued to stay in close range. Along with that, Derek tossed the man whatever stamina potions he could spare. It was getting down to crunch time, and they needed to be as fresh as possible for whatever came next.