Chapter 494: Chapter 491: Impact

Jadis was intimately familiar with the sensation of losing consciousness. Not just because she had been in a lot of fights and had been knocked out a few times. No, her experience was more unique than that. On almost a daily basis, Jadis got to feel what it was like to fall unconscious, without losing awareness of her surroundings, because her three bodies often fell asleep at different times. Dreaming while also being fully awake and aware of the fact that part of her was deep in slumber was beyond strange at times, yet she had gotten used to it fairly quickly since she really had not had a choice about it when she had first arrived on Oros. Having all of her selves asleep at the same time was best, since it was far less of a strain on her mind that way, but thanks to lots of practice she could function perfectly well with one or two of her selves unconscious while her third self was awake.

It was a very good thing she had so much practice, since having one of her bodies get knocked into oblivion while in the middle of a life-or-death battle was not ideal.

“Shit balls!” Dys cursed as she dashed after her Jay self.

Jay had been struck by the karkinos at an odd angle, causing her body to bounce off the ground and rocket like a ballistic missile through a wall on the western side of the road at an oblique angle. Since that part of her was unconscious, Jadis couldn’t sense around that self to see where she had been forcibly thrown, but she could still tell where her body was thanks to the subtle tug of the connection her selves shared. Of course, Dys didn’t really need to follow that sixth sense to find Jay, since the trail of destruction was obvious and easy to follow.

Dys ducked through the hole Jay had left in the wall, passed through what had likely been a haberdashery before being destroyed by a Nephilim-shaped projectile, continued through another wall and a room that had been a kitchen in better days, then outside to a small courtyard in the middle of a cluster of buildings. Jay had crashed into the side of a small well, her helmeted head sticking through the pale bricks of the well’s wall. There was even a furrow dug through the ground leading up to her unmoving body.

“Holy fucking crusted shit balls,” Dys almost unconsciously murmured as she pushed broken bricks off her other self’s unmoving body. “How the fuck am I not pasta sauce right now.”

Jay did not look good. The left side of her body was crumpled, her armor dented inward from her hip to her shoulder. Her left arm looked flattened from her shoulder to her elbow, and she could see that pieces of the dark steel she wore were cracked and falling apart. Her head was intact, though, which was good, and the rest of her didn’t look damaged from the impact either.

And, one more small bright spot, the essence leech that had latched onto Jay’s arm was a black stain oozing onto the ground, so at least she didn’t have to worry about her health draining any further than it already was.

Jadis cringed as she checked her stats. Hadn’t she just been thinking about how she never wanted to let her health get so needlessly low again? The karkinos’ one punch had done more than a thousand points of damage. Absolutely insane. She was almost certain that if she didn’t have almost two hundred and seventy points in Fortitude and had been wearing monstrously heavy armor, she’d be a smear on the ground just like the leech.

In fact, that was still very much a possibility, as even in the half second she spent checking her status, Jadis saw that her health was rapidly ticking down. Considering Jay’s chest had been caved in on one side, she had to be bleeding internally. Even though she survived the giant crab’s blow, she was going to die within minutes if she didn’t receive healing.

Jadis had her emergency healing, the Ceremony of Licentious Regeneration. Since it had been weeks since she had used it, she knew it had more than enough charge to heal herself back up to full. However, she also knew from experience that if she did heal herself without getting the crushed armor off of her Jay self, her recovery would be cancelled out, or at least severely reduced, since the severely compacted armor would just do more damage to her body.

Glancing around, Dys saw that while no Demons had followed her into the courtyard just yet, the area was far too exposed to spend any amount of time recovering. Aside from the hole in the wall her body had made, there were small alleyways between the buildings around her where enemies could come from. Knowing that it was going to hurt but not seeing any other way, Dys scooped her other self into her arms and quickly leapt up to a nearby rooftop.

“Eir is going to kill me for this,” Dys murmured as the rough movement caused her health to drop by another thirty points.

Not wanting to waste any precious time, Dys started pulling the armor from Jay’s body. Since it was so badly damaged, she made no attempt to preserve the structural integrity of the chest plate; instead Dys just ripped the straps and clasps that held her armor together apart, tossing the pieces aside as she moved at superhuman speeds. Every part of her equipment that came off revealed a ghastly sight of crushed flesh, though Jadis didn’t let the fact that she was looking at her own terrible injuries slow her. Blood and guts had never bothered her, either in her past life or her current one. The blood being her own wasn’t going to affect her now, when her life quite literally depended on it.

Once the chest piece was off and Jay’s broken body was revealed, Dys turned to pulling her left pauldron and arm armor off as well. She didn’t wait to trigger her licentious regeneration, though. With her body exposed and her health nearing double digits, Jadis couldn’t afford to wait.

Healing surged through Jadis, nearly instantly pushing her health back up to full. Jay’s chest, mangled and bent inward, rapidly expanded back out to where it had been before the impact with an audible click of her ribs realigning. Crushed flesh fixed itself, growing back into the correct shape where it could. Not everywhere, though, as Dys was still pulling the armor off of Jay’s broken left arm.

“You alright?”

Dys glanced over her shoulder at Noll, the big therion landing on the roof next to her. He looked a little rough around the edges, his black fur matted with mud and blood. He had a hole in his leg armor that hadn’t been there before, and his right ear was torn, which spoke volumes about the class of enemies he had been fighting while out of Jadis’ sight. Still, he was in one piece, and he looked a lot better than Jay did at that moment.

“Just pulling myself together,” Dys said as she ripped off another piece of bent steel from Jay’s upper arm. “I’ll be fine. Can you keep that fucking crab by the entrance to the market?”

Noll grunted in acknowledgement, then leapt away without another word.

Jadis half hoped that Noll would just kill the damn Demon with his incredible strength. This brush with death had been too close. The other, far more vocal, half of her cried out at the idea of Noll getting the kill. The fucking uber crustacean was her prey. She was going to be the one to kill the piece of shit. No one else.

Having finished pulling off all the armor from Jay’s arm, she saw that the damage was… manageable. Her use of licentious regeneration had brought her health up to two thousand four hundred and thirty-one health points, which was visible in how most of Jay’s body was healed. Her left arm was still a bit fucked up since Dys hadn’t gotten the armor fully off before triggering the ritual effect, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Opening one of the satchel pouches she had on her Jay self’s belt, Dys saw that the health potions she kept in there for emergencies had been crushed at some point between impact with the crab claw and the well wall. Pulling one of the small bottles out of her own belt, Dys opened Jay’s visor and poured the contents down her throat. It boosted her health up by another fifty points, but more importantly, it helped rouse Jay to full consciousness while also providing some additional physical recovery for her arm.

“This hurts so fucking much,” Jay groaned as Dys helped her to her feet.

“You think I don’t know?” Dys replied to her own complaint. “Quit whining. I need to get back into the fight.”

“Fucking right I do,” Jay snapped her helmet’s visor back down over her face. “I am totally eating that crab later. Motherfucker.”

While she was talking big, Jadis knew that she would need to keep her Jay self back from the fight. All of her torso armor had been wrecked and lay in a pile on the flat roof, so her vitals were completely exposed. All she had on under the armor had been a padded shirt. She still had her waist and leg armor, and the armor on her right arm. But she had dropped her maul somewhere in the wreckage and would need to find it.

Jay set about that task right away, jumping down into the courtyard where some lesser Demons were already starting to swarm so she could trace her impromptu flight and locate her war hammer. Dys, in the meantime, rushed towards the karkinos, which hadn’t moved far from its previous position.

Noll was already attacking the purple crustacean when she arrived and, to Dys’ surprise, the powerful veteran seemed to be having as much trouble as she had getting through the possession Demon’s red mist shield.

A sharp crack echoed as Noll’s curved blade slashed across the crab’s shell. The scarlet mist parted, but only barely, showing a shallow cut in the karkinos’ side that wasn’t deep enough to draw blood. The possessed beast turned towards him, rotating counterclockwise in place as it tried to turn its front so it could attack him with its explosive claws. Noll kept moving though, staying constantly in the crab’s blind spot, never giving the Demon a chance to use its devastating attack on him. He ignored the lesser Demons swarming around him and the karkinos, leaping between walls and buildings, and at one point bouncing off of the shoulders of a simulacrum.

Dys leapt into the fray without hesitation. Slamming her axe into one of the crab’s legs, she immediately withdrew and dodged to the side, keeping away from the beast’s front. She wasn’t doing any damage, since her attacks were still bouncing off of the enemy shield, but the karkinos definitely noticed her and attempted to land its own blow. Dys followed Noll’s example and kept moving, never staying in one spot long enough for the karkinos to track her.

Several times the possessed monster lashed out, cracking pavement and the walls of the buildings on either side of the street, leaving huge craters in the wake of its punches. A multitude of mire hounds and other Demons were killed by the wild attacks, turning the ground under the crab’s clawed legs into a churned graveyard of broken bodies and rubble. The sight of the huge beast rotating wildly about as it struggled to catch either Noll or Dys with its claws would have been comical, if the results weren’t so horrible.

Then, seeming to have reached a point of maximum frustration, the crab shook.

The motion wasn’t unlike that of a wet dog trying to get dry. Vibrating aggressively, the karkinos shook its whole body, its long legs splayed out to either side of the street as it quaked. Its purpose was clear from the start. Dozens of ugly green balls of acid that had accumulated on the top of the crab’s flat shell were launched off by the violent shaking, sending the deadly corrosive spheres in a spray all around the beast’s body.

Every Demon within fifty feet of the karkinos was instantly sizzled by the liquid. Even the sturdy simulacrums that had trundled close to the fight between titans melted under the green spew of acid rain. A noxious plume of foul smoke rose up from the bodies, burning eyes and lungs and clouding the area.

Dys leapt back, putting distance between herself and the karkinos in order to avoid getting splashed again by the acid. She already knew what it felt like to have her skin melt and she was in no rush to experience it again. Noll, on the other hand, didn’t back away, but instead dashed directly under the karkinos, where the balls of acid didn’t reach.

“Noll! No!” Dys shouted, immediately seeing the danger such a move put her mentor in.

Almost instantly the karkinos smashed down, using its body like a massive weight to drop directly on top of Noll’s head. The impact of the colossal crab hitting the street shook the ground under Dys’ feet as a wave of dust and debris was forced outward from under the creature’s huge body.

“Bastard!” Dys screamed as she sprinted back towards the Demon.

Jadis didn’t know if Noll could survive a weight like that being dropped on him. She wasn’t sure she would have survived it. The thought of Noll dying to this piece of garbage crab monster was utterly incomprehensible to Jadis. It was, frankly, impossible. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, allow it.

“Get off of him you overgrown crabcake!”

Reaching the karkinos, Dys slammed her axe into the creature’s side, her attack once more blocked by the possession Demon’s shield. Her strike and shout did the job of getting the Demon’s attention, though, and Jadis braced to see the worst as the magic beast started to rise from the ground on its long legs.

“What the—”

Dys couldn’t stand and stare in shock. The karkinos was already turning to attack her and she had to keep moving. She felt like gawking like an idiot, though, because Noll wasn’t a flattened pancake on the street stones. He wasn’t on the street under the crab at all. There was nothing there under the karkinos but more dead Demons, squashed into oblivion.

“Thanks for the concern,” a familiar voice growled from a nearby window. “But you really think I’m that slow and stupid?”

“Oh, fuck off Noll,” Dys shouted at the therion. “I’m seriously considering not inviting you to my wedding now.”

If Jadis had seen it as a bad move, of course she should have known Noll would see it as inadvisable as well. The therion had not stayed under the karkinos but had instead used his insane speed to dodge out from under the monster as soon as it had started to fall, ducking inside one of the nearby buildings. It had been a feint, a lure to drag the crab down into a bad position, and it had worked.

Noll pounced on top of one of the crab’s extended legs, furiously slashing his blade across the vulnerable knee joint that had been exposed by stretching out so far. The Demon’s shield flared to life, protecting its host’s shell, but it could only do so much against the power of one of the empire’s strongest warriors. Within two seconds, Noll had cut his way deep inside of the karkinos’ armored leg and, as the beast rapidly lurched around to attack the therion, a sickening crack resounded through the night air.

The monster’s leg snapped, unable to hold the weight of its immense body due to the damage Noll had inflicted. The crab stumbled, its other legs compensating for the loss of the appendage, but it crashed hard into the side of a three-story storefront that had already been badly damaged by the battle. Its wide shell caught in the stone building, its front facing towards the market square as it struggled to keep itself upright and recover from the loss.

The position and timing could not have been more perfect.

Dys and Noll both leapt back as a barrage of translucent explosions erupted all around the karkinos. Stones, Demons, and all manner of debris were torn asunder as blast after arcane blast shook the ground in rapid succession. A total of fourteen explosions went off, all focused on and around the crab, ripping the terrain to pieces. As the final blasts hit, the whole side of the building collapsed, falling on top of the karkinos and burying it in a mountain of rubble.

Grinning under her helmet, Dys waved at the two figures flying overhead. Severina was hovering over the battlefield, her feather and steel wings spread wide in the image of an avenging angel. In her arms she carried a long-legged redhead who looked just a little awkward, since she was actually quite a lot taller than the noble Seraphim.

Just as Syd had asked her to, Aila had replenished her magic reserves to full and waited for the right opportunity to unleash a full barrage of force bolt explosions on the unsuspecting karkinos. Since Syd’s hands were otherwise occupied, Severina had acted as the arcanist’s transportation. The goal had been to either kill or incapacitate the giant beast, preferably when it was in a good position to block off the northern road that led from the market square. Aila had timed her attack just right, causing massive damage by literally collapsing a three-story building onto the crab.

Jadis would have been happy enough if the magical explosions had been enough to do the job. However, she hadn’t expected it to be enough. She wasn’t glad to be proven right, but she was pleased that, for once, she was fully prepared for what came next.

The karkinos wasn’t dead. Yet. With half of its legs and part of its body buried in the rubble of the destroyed building, it wasn’t happy, but it wasn’t dead. With some help from her favorite orc, Syd was ready to change that.

Crashing down onto the colossal crab’s shell, Syd carried Bridget right up to the beast. Thanks to Aila’s spells, the back of the monster was cleared of all acidic spheres, everything having popped from the explosions. With a fierce roar, the lantern-wielding warrior slammed her flail against the karkinos’ shell. Her burning lantern struck the creature and spread, wreathing its purple form with blue flames, indicating Bridget’s spell Light the Target Up had taken effect. For five seconds, all damage done to the crab would be increased by half again as much as the base damage of the attack.

“Block this, bitch!” Syd shouted as she speared the tip of her sword staff into the center of the crab’s back.

Jadis cast Crack the Glass as Syd’s blade hit home. The possession Demon’s red mist shield flowed over the spot, protecting the karkinos, but another effect appeared as well. A ghostly white latticework of cracks spread out from the center of Syd’s blow, covering a foot-wide circle like a jagged spiderweb. For ten seconds, that spot and that spot alone would trigger Mirrored Strikes.

As Bridget backed off and began striking the karkinos’ shell with her own barrage of attacks, Syd laid into the Demon-possessed monster with all of her might. Smashing the point of her sword into the creature’s back, she went at it like a machine. She wasn’t even sure how fast she was hitting the thing’s shielded shell, just that she was pushing herself to move faster than she had ever moved before.

After the first two seconds, the red mist of the Demon’s shield faded. In the second after that, Syd’s sword staff pierced through the purple shell of the crab monster, digging deep into its flesh and causing a gout of black Demon blood to spurt up and out of the hole she had made. Slamming her weapon into the weak spot, Syd buried the blade all the way past the hilt so that only the handle was showing. Then, she got out of the way.

In the final second that Bridget’s spell was active, Jay slammed her hammer down onto the pommel of Syd’s sword staff, having leapt from a nearby rooftop in a full-bodied dive. Her maul smashed her other self’s weapon deep into the beast’s body, like a nail being driven into a plank of wood. The monster’s shell cracked and split around the impact crater that Jay made with the force of her attack, causing true spiderweb cracks to spread out for several feet around the spot.

The karkinos shuddered, something vital being damaged inside of its body. The legs that weren’t half-buried in rubble twitched and spasmed in an uncontrolled way, a great deal of the monster’s strength having flowed out of it. Jadis could see that the red shield protecting the crab was gone now, and while she could tell that some kind of healing magic was starting to work on the karkinos, the effect wasn’t going to be fast enough. The Demon didn’t know it yet, but it was already dead.

Dys’ axe cut through one of the eye stalks of the giant crab, then the other, making sure that the Demon inside wouldn’t be able to see since it was reliant on the senses of its host while it possessed the beast. Without a barrier to block her blade, the two chops were easy. After that, Dys started hacking away at the crab’s back, cutting open the shell to get at the gooey flesh within. When the Demon tried to reach for her with one of its huge pincers, Noll darted in and slashed his blade across a joint. The whole claw fell to the ground, crushing several mire hounds in its wake as the appendage tumbled down the pile of rubble to hit the cobblestones of the market square.

“You got this?” Noll asked as he paused on top of the ruined karkinos.

“I’ve got this,” Dys confirmed before slamming her axe down again onto the creature’s broken shell.

Noll nodded, then dashed off into the crowded square, slashing through countless Demons as he made his way towards the line of soldiers blocking off the western side of the area.

It took a minute, but with Jadis’ three selves working together, the karkinos was ripped open and the Demon inside exposed. It was a huge thing, with a body as big as Jadis’ three selves put together and multiple lime-green eyes dotting its tentacle-covered body. Once she had the Demon inside the crab revealed, Jadis didn’t gloat. Syd, with her bloody sword staff retrieved from the hole she had made, simply struck the possession Demon in its core, ending all its attempts at pulling its devastated host back together.

All three of Jadis heaved out sighs of exhausted relief. The attack was still going, the city was still invaded, and the giant demonic wyrm thing still had to be fought. But with this one enemy dead, she felt like a corner had been turned. One of the greatest of the enemy’s numbers was dead, and she had killed it without taking any serious losses.

At that thought, Jay glanced down at her unarmored torso and grimaced.

“Fucking crabs.”

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