Book 2: Chapter 46: Boss Fight

  The battlefield had become noise and fire, a churn of flame tongues and broken stone, blood soaking the aether-fog into something thick and sour. Now it was still and silent as a graveyard, all eye were turned toward this new arrival. The Prince of the Aeralith Kingdom.

  Behind the mask, the man’s eyes roamed the battle, looking searching for something. It didn’t take long until they landed on Alex, and stopped. He felt a shiver run down his spine as the figure stared at him.

  “Um, meatboy, I think you should move.”

  Way ahead of you.

  Alex leapt from a broken barricade, vaulted over a collapsed ridge, and sprinted for the cliffs on the east rise. He needed higher ground. Whoever that was, if was the Prince or not didn’t matter, they were obviously there for Alex in particular. If this was about to become personal, he was going to pick the stage.

  And it was personal.

  Behind him, the dark-silver aether of the man’s armors still flared as he moved. Prince Irieth of Aeralith was moving across the battlefield like a storm wrapped in silk, delicate, graceful, and utterly unrelenting.

  Alex didn’t need Obby to tell him this was bad, but Obby told him anyway. “That man’s mage core… it’s nearly full liquid-stage. Almost at Solid aether compression of Adept Tier.”

  Great. Love that for me. Anything that’s not just about how fucked I am?

  He skidded to a halt atop the cliff edge, boots scraping against gravel and fractured tree roots. The wind up there bit cold against his skin, not natural wind, but aether wind, pulled from the world itself by the presence now striding toward him.

  “Well, if he kills you, it’ll probably be over quickly.”

  Thanks. Just start analyzing and run me a battle plan. Find me weak points.

  Prince Irieth stepped through the fog like curtains that parted for him personally. Shadows gathered at his heels. His cloak fluttered behind him without breeze.

  A Terraxum soldier lunged to intercept him, a good man, brave and stupid, and was sliced in half by a single arc of invisible pressure. Another warbeast bounded toward him and exploded mid-leap, its aether core ruptured from within like a popped blister.

  Alex swallowed hard. Okay. Focus.

  The prince finally stopped a dozen paces away, standing on fractured stone like it was a royal dais. His voice carried across the gap with unnatural clarity, though he never raised it.

  “You’re the soldier. The one they whisper about. The Demon of Terraxum”

  Alex exhaled once. “I’ve been called worse.”

  “No doubt.” The prince’s mask glinted in the crimson glyphlight. “Let’s see if the whispers are true.”

  He gave no warning, chanted no spell. The prince just moved.

  Alex barely dodged the first blow, a slicing whip of compressed wind aether that scored the rock face behind him deep enough to swallow his forearm.

  Alright. Can’t block that.

  He darted left, flaring aether from his bracer, launching a [Wind Lance] into the fog. It exploded on the stone the man was standing on but the prince was already gone, reappearing at Alex’s flank, blade gleaming.

  Alex ducked, pivoted, struck low but his fist passed through shadow, and afterimage. The real Irieth was behind him, driving a spiraling kick into Alex’s spine. The impact launched him off his feet, slamming him into the cliff wall hard enough to dislodge a small rockslide. Pain lanced up his ribs, and down his back.

  He coughed blood but managed to stay on his feet. “Aright. No more nice guy.”

  Stone cracked under foot as he launched himself forward, already entering a stance of [Demon Asura Style]. Aether flooded his veins, heat and tension singing in his arms. The strain hit fast, burning, draining, but worth it.

  They clashed, fist to blade, pure aether to wind.

  Alex’s blows struck with enough force to bend and buckle steel but the prince met them with a blade that sang with every parry. He was fast. Too fast.

  He tried rooting the prince down with an [Earth Chain], but every spell Alex cast was interrupted, countered with shadow slips, mirrored illusions that fractured before he could complete any true offense.

  He tried misdirection, a backstep feint into a [Flare] enhanced punch. The prince didn’t even flinch. He rolled with the explosion like it was a gust of wind and replied with three fast jabs of air aether that shattered the stones beneath Alex’s feet.

  He almost tumbled off the edge. Only instinct and raw, stupid stubbornness kept him up as he clung to the rock face and swung himself over in a spinning arc. Just as he landed on his feet, the Prince was there, landing another kick directly at his chest which Alex was forced to block with a [Shield] and his crossed forearms.

  The spell barrier shattered the moment of contact, and he felt the bones in his arms practically shatter as he was launched away.

  Panting, Alex skidded back, chest heaving. His internal organs felt like they were clawing at him from inside out. His bracer was torn, arms broken. He was certain his spine was cracked from the first kick he had taken.

  “Definitely cracked. If you strain it even more, it’ll break.”

  I know...

  “He’s a dual attuned mage, Air and Dark. He uses wind vibration and shadows to make illusions and trick your senses. Then attack with air spells.

  I know.

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  “You’ll need to create an opening and attempt to cripple him in one blow.”

  I know! He grit his teeth, pushing back the pain from his mind and using it to fuel the [Demon Asura Style] instead. The etheral horns above his brow grew and flickered, the purple-blue aura around him growing darker.

  As the aura cascading around his body grew, he felt some of that energy siphon away and into his muscles, feeding him even more strength like an injection of adrenaline straight into his heart. He knew this to be the unlocked passive from the Tier II of his martial style, [Asura’s Bloodwrath]. A truly masochistic passive effect, treating his accumulating wounds as currency to purchase every increasing physical strength, and thanks to the Aerali Prince, Alex was cashing out a huge check.

  Across from him, Irieth stood untouched. And unbothered.

  “I expected more,” the prince said simply. “But perhaps that’s unfair. You are… an invention, after all.”

  Alex didn’t answer right away. He wiped blood from his lip with his thumb, then smiled. Just a little.

  “You talk a lot for a guy wearing a full-face mask.”

  For a flicker of a moment, the smallest ripple, the prince hesitated. Then the shadows surged.

  And the real fight began.

  Alex ducked under another wind-slicing arc that could’ve taken off his head, rolled into the cratered ground, and came up panting.

  “Obby,” he growled between breaths, “I’m open to suggestions that don’t end in death.”

  “There’s a fractured edge in the stone five meters behind him. If you can get him to shift his stance, the rock will collapse under his weight. Maybe.”

  And by maybe, you mean...?

  “He’s lighter on his feet than a cloud in a sauna. Odds of success: 2.3%.”

  Cool. Cool cool cool. Glad we had this talk.

  Another cut bloomed across his forearm, he hadn’t even seen the blade move. The prince was no longer attacking him to kill, he was showing off. Like a teacher showing a particularly thick student just how outclassed they were. He swept in and out of Alex’s reach, reducing the effect of his [Asura’s Bloodwrath] to nothing more than an added window dressing to an already burning house in the hopes of keeping alive a little bit longer.

  Alex backpedaled, switching fully into the Sixth Stance of the Demon Asura. Defensive, careful, it was about flow with the violence. Focused on dodging where you can, parrying when you must, survival by inches.

  The prince’s strikes carved arcs into the air, each one singing with wind pressure, and shadow threads dancing off the edges. Alex sidestepped, tucked, kicked off a broken boulder, barely avoiding another devastating sweep, and caught a strike along the edge of his right leg. The crunch of bone was sharp and immediate. He staggered.

  Obby spoke again, quieter this time. “He’s dissecting you, Alex. He knows you’re dangerous. He’s peeling off your layers until there’s nothing left.”

  Alex knew. He knew. And worse, he knew none of the others could stop this man if he fell. Kate? She was fierce, explosive, but her techniques couldn’t match this level of precision. Zach? A shadow dancer, yes. But not this kind of shadow. Eric? A leader, a tactician, but he'd be torn in half before he could bark a single order. Alex didn’t have any options left. Excpet one, the [Descending Demon Fist].

  The big powerhouse technique in his Martial Style. The one he hadn’t used since that time in the Dark Den. Because it wasn’t a clean kill shot sort of technique, it was a cliff-face. You didn’t climb down this cliff though, you jumped. And prayed you hit something on the way down. Because it was going break his body, strain it to the point of exhaustion. If he missed, he wouldn’t be able to put up a fight afterward.

  He wiped blood from his mouth. His vision swam. “Obby.”

  “I know.” Alex’s vision lit up with a projected attack path, the midsection point of the Princes armor plating showing as the optimal strike point.

  Alex’s aether surged. His legs coiled, every tendon in his body screamed as he dropped into the martial stance, a low, crouched position that felt more like a ritual than a wind-up. From behind him, the aether formed, coalescing into the image of a demonic arm, thick, musclebound, threaded with veins, massive. The echo of a monster long extinct, its rage frozen in eternal flame.

  It mimicked his stance, and when Alex moved, it moved with him.

  He shot forward like a meteor, the Asura’s phantom fist surging ahead in perfect tandem with his strike. Everything around him shuddered in response, air and aether bending to his will.

  The prince reacted instantly, his body dropping into his own Martial Technique, a stormstep form that folded air and shadow into six-fold crescents, each one blooming from his position in a starburst of deadly force. Wind screamed and shadows spiraled around his sword tip in front of him.

  The two techniques collided, Demon versus Storm Prince, and the world went silent for half a heartbeat.

  BOOM!

  The cliff cracked and the air exploded. Rocks lifted off the ground and floated for a moment, weightless, suspended in a shockwave of aether, and wind, and shadow.

  Alex was thrown back, tumbling across the dirt, armor half-destroyed, blood pouring from his nose, ears, and somewhere behind his eyes. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t even think through the pain. He felt his back had finally broken, as he couldn’t move his legs at all. Hot lances of firery pain shut up and down his back instead. His arm was a mangled mess, bent backward and crooked, the reward for his effort.

  But he was alive.

  And the prince… stood in the center of the scorched crater, cloak shredded, arm hanging limp at his side, his mask cracked, revealing a sliver of pale skin and a single golden eye, narrowed with something that almost looked like anger.

  “You surprise me, having made me bleed,” He said, walking forward toward Alex’s prone form.

  He could only look futilely at his approaching death as he lay there, a pool of blood forming underneath him. His right arms was the only limb he could even barely move, and even that was still broken. His body was exhausted to the point he barely had the energy to breath. His eyes flickered, vision fading in and out of blackness.

  “Okay, up you get Alex, come on. Use the Ashen Phoenix feather. Remember, from the Dungeon Shop?”

  He did remember, Obby had made sure he had gotten that. He looked at the bracelet on his wrist. He tried looking into it, finding the item he needed, but his mind was mush. He couldn’t focus his energy to pull it out even if he could locate it.

  I can’t.

  “You must.”

  I’m done, Obby.

  The prince stepped closer. His aura was a crashing tide now, wind and shadow wrapped in divine wrath. Every step he took toward Alex pressed down on him like a mountain. Alex's broken hand twitched in the dirt. He wanted to rise, to face death with a measure of dignity, but he couldn’t.

  And then—It shifted. A pulse, a thrumming, from deep inside his chest something ancient stirred. A heart beat rang out like a war drum, a bell, a roar. This wasn’t desperate fluttering panic. It was fire, and rage, and survival all wrapped into one.

  His core flared. No, not his core, but the Wyrm-heart. That terrible thing nested in his soulspace. His own wrath and pride rang out to it, and it answered.

  Scales tore through his skin in jagged lines of radiant dark purple-blue. His arms flexed as if new tendons had woven through his flesh. The bone snapped and reformed in a single convulsion of pain and power. Aether flooded into him violently, raw. His eyes ignited, slited pupils blazing, breath steamed with heat.

  He rose. It wasn’t graceful. Maybe not even fully human anymore, but he stood. The Aeralith Prince froze one step short of striking distance. Through the cracked edge of his mask, Alex saw that single golden eye, calm and controlled anger before, now narrowed in uncertainty, afraid.

  The wind around him hissed like it had forgotten who it obeyed.

  Alex’s voice came gravel-thick and low. “Let’s go again?” The aether of Wyrm-fire, mixed with corrupted aura of the Demon Asura, coiled around his fists, brimming with the threat of unleashed catastrophe.

  The prince didn’t move. For the first time in the fight he evaluated Alex. And this time, it appeared he was uncertain of the odds. Without a word, he stepped back. Shadows folded over his body, a technique blurring his form into smoke. But just before he vanished completely… that single golden eye met Alex’s one last time. Not with anger, but with a promise: next time.

  And then he was gone.

  Alex remained standing, for three more seconds, then he collapsed.

  The Wyrmfire faded, the energy rushing back through his body, and up into his soulspace. As he fell to the ground once more, he managed to finally pull an item from his bracelet. As he landed, the item tumbled from his fingers.

  Darkness came crashing in from behind his eyes.