EmEs_etherious
patreon
Chapter 150- The Seer's Moment
🕑 Added 2024-05-02 22:59:01 +0000 UTCIris watched the fight play out in slow motion, as time seemed to almost freeze under her deep concentration. Ayesha's golden chain went flying at the beast's skull, an aerial attack made in conjunction with Arthurs's grand assault. People tended to overestimate her seer abilities, she couldn’t see into the future so much as blindly feel her way forward, and so she cried out a panicked warning when the bloodbeast turned its attention towards Arthur.
Its claws were poised to strike his throat and she was already searching through her spacial ring for the strongest healing treasure she could find. A miracle seemed to play out and Arthur was suddenly jerked forward like a puppet on strings, narrowly avoiding the dagger-like claws. Had she been as superstitious as some of the Fae she knew, she would’ve said fate itself played a hand in her companion's rescue. Logic, however, told her he’d somehow used water magic to save himself. She let out an explosive sigh of relief and focused back on the ritual she was working on.
Arthur, meanwhile, was making the most of his initial strike, twisting his spear upwards so that it penetrated through as many internal organs as possible. On its journey through the creature's back, his weapon got stuck on its spine, and with a savage jerk of his hands, Arthur tore through it. The beast roared in agony and struck at him, but with no legs to stand upon, it lacked the necessary bite to even force him to dodge. He tanked its claws head-on and was left with only a few shallow scratches for his troubles. In his first test against the bloodbeasts venom, Arthur came out ahead.
Ayesha capitalised on the creature's momentary weakness, wrapping its legs together with her golden chains, four revolutions of the stuff that left most of its limbs covered. She pulled the monster forward and Arthur pushed his spear deeper, the physics of their two-pronged attack causing The Hydra's Revenge to topple onto its back. Arthur moved forward, pulling his spear out of the creature before using it to pierce the monster's throat and pin it to the floor.
Iris watched in horrified fascination as the soul-mage proceeded to brutalise the beast. There was no finesse to it, no grand technique; just pure simple violence employed to inflict maximum damage. Arthur removed his spear before thrusting it down again and again, each time aiming for the unprotected areas of the monster's throat. Iris knew what he was doing. The advantages soul-mages had with their ability to inflict true damage was a well-known fact and she knew from Arthur's explanations that he had his own variation of the skill.
Tearing through the bloodbeast's neck inflicted substantial damage, a fraction of it permanently reducing the creature's healthpool and thus its soul explosion should they fail here. Something the bloodbeast realised very fast, apparently. It tried to bat Arthur away, but he was having none of it, using his superior position to constantly manoeuvre out of its claw's range. Next, it tried to bat away his spear, but Arthur simply slammed it in further, burying it a metre into the ground. Now the monster was well and truly stuck, the healing flesh around its wound far too sturdy for the weapon's shaft to break through, no matter how much force the creature applied to its side. The weapon had to either fully pass through its throat, or be pulled out altogether, two things that were patently impossible with the solid earth beneath it and Arthur on the other end.
The Hydra's Revenge growled in frustration, blood leaking from its mouth as it felt those annoying chains wrap around its legs. They were a weak magic, easily broken it was certain, but impossible to accomplish with how it was splayed out on the floor. Iris didn't know if she should be horrified or amazed by what happened next. Who the hell fights like that? The man in question had generated a spiked shadow boot on one foot, which he then used to stomp on the creature's skull, again and again, like it was a particularly disgusting spider that he wanted to squash out of existence.
It was a brutal display of savagery that trumped all the fanciful sword-work and magical mastery she'd seen employed in battle, a method of execution that seemed more suited for a crime of passion than battle. The monster's head held up admirably to the first stomp. And the second. On the third, a piece of its bone helm cracked and fell away. It was like knocking over the first domino, in that the monster accrued damage rapidly after that. Shards of bone splintered and went flying, along with broken teeth. Eyes popped out of their sockets, the soft flesh pulped to a smooth jelly as they were replaced nearly instantly, the monster's miraculous regeneration working overtime to heal so much damage.
It took three seconds for the creature's skull to start caving in and five before Arthur's foot completely passed through the monster's head. If the ascended bloodbeast wasn't such a massive threat, Iris would have felt sorry for it. Unfortunately, things didn't go so well for long. Iris barely had a second warning, a sudden flare of her only legendary skill. It didn't tell her what the danger was, just that it was coming and had to be avoided. Warning them wouldn't change anything; there wasn't enough time and Arthur was too close to the bloodbeast to get away. She could only pray he was strong enough to survive.
Iris called out a warning anyway, futile as it was, even as she set her sights on saving Ayesha. The sound of her voice hadn't even left her lips when the bloodbeasts counterattack started, hitting Arthur point blank. It was an explosion of poison and something else, a rare magic affinity it took her a second to recognise: gravity. That was when her legendary skill came into play, drastically slowing down her perception of time relative to how much danger she was in.
Iris was in a shit-ton of trouble.
The explosion was travelling at a snail's pace and she estimated that she had seventy seconds before it reached her. It was the greatest effect her skill had ever had on time and told her everything she needed to know about how fucked she was. The Seer's Moment was a broken ability, even by her father's absurd standards. It quite literally made it impossible to assassinate her or take her out with a single devastating strike.
Unfortunately, it came with its fair share of limitations, primarily amongst them being that it only activated when she was in immediate mortal peril. She was still susceptible to kidnappings and things of that nature as well as slow-acting poisons; though thorough testing had taught her that the skill would would activate after the poison had run its course and she was on the verge of death. She shuddered at the memory. The skill had been useless, serving to only prolong her suffering, working only during the final second of consciousness, when she'd become paralysed and lost access to all her active skills.
She'd been lucky Ayesha had arrived when she did. Well, I guess luck had nothing to do with it. I did time my experiments to align perfectly with her visitation as a safety precaution. The second limitation the skill had, arguably the greatest one, was that whilst it accelerated her thought process and magic usage to keep up with her new perception of time, it only granted her a physical boost equivalent to 25% of that. Still, it was a massive boost compared to the measly 10% she'd had at level 1.
Iris took in the scene and categorised what she would do and placed them on a list of descending importance. At the top was saving herself and Ayesha. Arthur, her skills told her, was tough enough to survive. One way or the other, he'd come out of the other side alive. Besides, it was too late to do anything to help Arthur now, the explosion had sully engulfed him before her skill had even activated. The second objective on her list was to set up a few rituals to weaken the beast and take away its home-ground advantage. She hadn't expected The Seer's Moment to activate during this fight, but she'd be damned if she didn't make the most out of the opportunity it presented.
The first thing she did was retrieve a minor teleportation talisman from her storage ring. They were generally seen as useless, costing outrageous sums of wealth for the simple ability of travelling only thirty metres, and only to a place you had a direct line of sight to. Right now, however, it was perfect for her purposes. Displaying a monstrous talent for spell script, Iris rapidly edited the runes on the talisman to recognise a different starting point, effectively reversing its direction. She was done in less than a second.
Iris quickly activated the modified talisman, focusing it in Ayesha's direction. A half second later, her best friend was teleported right next to her. Now that she had them both in the same place, it was time to create the strongest barrier she knew. iris winced at the thought of all the expensive regents she'd use but dismissed the notion quickly. She'd spend a thousand times as much if it could guarantee them victory in this fight.
Since she was pouring so many resources into it, she might as well go all in. A healing-over-time effect. Lesser force armour. Can I throw in a damage enhancer too? With so little time to work with and in such a chaotic environment, she was quite literally burning resources to create results she would normally consider subpar- the tried and tested throw money at the problem method.
It took her just under thirty seconds to finish her barriers, which left her approximately forty seconds to work with. She considered the steadily growing orb of poisoned gravity magic. It represented the biggest source of energy on this side of the planet, the equivalent of one-and-a-half soul explosions. Gravity and poison, two affinities that had almost nothing to do with each other. An idea came to mind, one that she'd considered before but never had the opportunity to test. Sure, it'd make her barrier a waste of resources, but she liked the insurance it provided should she fail. Iris had an affinity for time magic on the higher end of average, which translated to a nearly godly level of talent when one considered how incredibly rare the affinity was. Normally she never had enough of the energy to work with, but with Seer's Moment active at the strongest she'd ever seen it, the area was positively saturated with time-affinity ether.
The gravity affinity was loosely connected with space and it was a powerful affinity in and of itself. She had no idea if it would work, if it was even possible, especially with such little time. Fuck it, she decided, glaring at the growing energy bomb. Iris was going to see what she could cook up with gravity, time and poison. Whatever the result would be, she was sure the results would turn the tide of battle.
Arthur's body jolted and he gasped in a lung full of breath. It felt like he'd been sleeping and someone had chosen to wake him up by running three hundred volts through him. He felt off, like he was missing something he'd known a second ago, a dream that faded rapidly from memory as one returned to the realm of the living He recalled taking the bloodbeast in the throat with his spear, the sensation of its skull cracking beneath his heel... the bloodbeast! Where was it?
Before panic could set in, he caught sight of it. The monster was to his left, suspended in mid-air as if held aloft by invisible strings, its flesh vapourising and healing in a continuous cycle as he watched. Arthur blanched at the sight of it as welcome as it was. A part of his memory was simply missing; he couldn't recall how the beast had ended up in such a state. One moment, he'd been attacking it, then there'd been a flash of light and then... this?
"Arthur, stop spacing out and attack the damn thing, you fool." Ayesha cried out, bringing him back to the present. She was right. He could figure out what had happened later. Making the most of his enemy's weakness was more important right now. A notification clamoured for his attention, the fact that it was showing despite the way he'd configured his system's settings indicating that it was critically relevant to the fight. Arthur quickly read through it, a grin rapidly widening on his face.
This was perfect.
Your Greaves of Achilles has triggered its secondary effect. One of three charges consumed for the next 24 hours. You have negated and absorbed 103,041 points of damage.
You may enhance your next attack.
