System Change

As Derek and Avery continued trying to wear the boss down, Vanessa’s shadows seemed to be trying to force themselves into the beast’s mouth, eyes, and ears. But, for some reason, the shadows just couldn’t find their way inside—the usual weak spots on such a beast looked to be closed tight and highly defended. Even one of Avery’s drill arrows did nothing more than leave a small mark on the beast’s eyelid—one that nearly instantly disappeared.

On top of her shadows not being able to sneak inside the boss monster, they also appeared to be weaker than they were at the beginning of the fight. Eventually, Vanessa gave up on whatever she was trying, and her shadows receded and disappeared.

Derek looked around the battlefield for her, but she had been hidden well, and he didn’t know where she was acting from. However, her shadows didn’t make another appearance once they receded—she was most likely running low on mana or willpower, even though they hadn’t been in battle long. Using the shadows to constrain the beast at the beginning, along with them being hit by Silvi’s dragon fire, had to have taken a toll on the woman.

On top of that, throwing everything she had at the enemy and nothing being effective was probably a mental blow to the former Vice Leader of the Assassin’s Guild. But Vanessa wasn’t the only one whose attack seemed to be ineffective on the beast.

Derek had barely seen Lyra doing anything during the fight. He realized why when the amphithere dove down and hovered directly in front of the meditating beast. The winged serpent stared daggers at the beast, but nothing happened. It looked as though her mind blasts and other mental attacks were having no success against the summoned beast.

Finally, Lyra turned her massive head, and Derek saw into her eyes. Avery’s companion looked exhausted. He wondered how much her attacks had actually done to the boss monster. It was possible that it was her mental attacks that kept the beast from unleashing its full power. Derek nodded at Lyra—she was trying her very best.

Derek and Avery continued their close-range fighting for a little longer. They were doing everything in their power to out damage the beast’s healing. Lyra pitched in with her mind attacks, but at best, it was helping Derek interrupt the boss’s regeneration through Meditation—at worst, the beast’s mind was shielded and it wasn’t doing anything to harm it, and Lyra was exhausting herself for nothing.

Suddenly, Derek felt before he saw almost all the darkness above him disappear, causing him to heave a sigh of relief. If the skill was finally broken, it meant that their attacks were working. However, when he turned his head to glance up, instead of only seeing the clear blue sky that he expected, he saw a black sphere the size of a giant beach ball with bright, glittering white lights rotating inside.

At that point, he realized that the beast hadn’t been losing control of its skill—it was condensing it. Wide-eyed, Derek watched as the sphere began to rotate one way faster and faster, while the condensed stars inside the sphere spun the opposite.

The surrounding space close to the sphere began to warp and split and a light gravitational pull began to form on the outside of it. The faster the sphere and stars rotated, the stronger the pull, and the more distorted the surrounding space became.

At first, Derek wasn’t overly worried about the sphere. It was far away, and didn’t move. However, once the rotations reached a certain speed, the sphere began to move. Though slow for now, with the amount of spatial distortion caused by the sphere, if it happened to get close to anyone in the party, that person wouldn’t last a second before… I’m not sure what would happen if someone was caught up inside a spatial distortion.

In a split second, Derek had to make a decision. He didn’t know how much bigger the sphere would become, how much more dangerous it would become, or if it would begin moving faster, but it was making a B-Line straight to the Starfury Leonarus. If it closed in, both he and Avery would have to retreat, which would give the beast even more opportunities to heal. And this was just as Avery’s close range Drill Shots were starting to add up after Derek gave him his supply of stamina potions.

So, instead of focusing his attack on the beast along with Avery, he put his trust in the archer and moved to intercept the giant ball of death. With his only real damaging move on cooldown, he was built to defend against things like this. Derek faced his whole body in the direction of the sphere, put his glaive away, and cast Absolute Nullify with as much energy as he could muster.

Immediately, the skill appeared in front of the sphere, and the two clashed. On one end was the cosmic and spatial energy created by the Starfury Leonarus, on the other was the nullifying properties of the void. Each skill pulled the other towards it before they collided and stuck together like magnets.

Derek kicked off the void using Void Steps with his void prosthetic and moved closer to the sphere, allowing him a closer distance to dump his mana into Absolute Nullify. At the same time, he reached for a mana potion from his storage device and gulped it down.

For the time being, he was able to halt the other skill’s advance, but he didn’t know how long it would last. With Absolute Nullify absorbing some of the other skill’s energy, the growth of the skill slowed, but it wasn’t enough to halt the growth completely. With each passing second, the cosmic sphere grew larger and the danger to everyone increased.

While stalling the other skill, Derek once again felt a sense of dread overwhelm him. But the dread wasn’t coming from the sphere, and it was no longer just a feeling he was getting—no, he realized that the dread he kept feeling was actually emanating from the Starfury beast itself.

Now what’s it going to do? Derek slowly turned his head while keeping as much focus as he could on Absolute Nullify. When his eyes finally landed on the beast, he was surprised to see the lion’s own eyes snap open. Derek tensed, and just in the corner of his vision, he saw Avery blur and vanish in an attempt to flee from whatever the beast was about to unleash. Dammit! He inwardly cursed.

At the beginning of the fight, everything seemed to be going their way. They just didn’t have enough firepower to finish the job. Derek cursed at the system for giving him utility skill after utility skill. Even his main attacking skill wasn’t actually an attack skill, it was just a way to channel his element—and the other skills he relied on the most?

One was Sweeping Slash, which was a skill he earned through an Achievement that was upgraded because of a similar skill he had purchased from the other system. The other skill was Multi-Strike, which he earned through the same Achievement as Sweeping Slash. The majority of his offensive power actually came from the Offensive Powerhouse Achievement, not from his own class.

On top of that, the only reason they worked as well as they did was because Multi-Strike was very versatile and had great compatibility with all his attacks. He was lucky that he could use both it and Channel Void at the same time. Missing either one in his attack would cripple his offensive power against any powerful enemy.

Derek couldn’t help but think of these things as he frantically tried to figure out what to do. He was currently missing a foot, and his other leg was a mangled mess. However, he wasn’t worried about himself, and he had no doubt that Silvi would be able to escape with Void Travel. But what would it do to the others if he took them inside the void with him?

His previous conversation with Avery had him thinking. Would something happen to everyone inside the Time Prison if he closed it and used Void Travel? Would the results be the same as some of the food and ingredients that Silvi brought through? He was happy that he was given a warning, but really wished it wasn’t so vague.

As he was staring down at the boss monster and running through the options in his head, he noticed the look in the Starfury Leonarus’s eyes change. Gone was both the toying look of a predator playing with its food and the anger once it realized that its prey could fight back. Instead, if Derek had to describe what he was seeing… Is… is that fear? Is it scared of something? For some reason, the beast looked afraid.

But why? We’ve thrown everything we have at it, and it still standing. No, it’s doing even better than that. The beast had basically outlasted them, and Derek was even thinking about a way to retreat.

But as he was thinking, the dread that had washed over Derek for some time now instantly vanished. Not only that, but moments later, he noticed that Absolute Nullify was even beginning to overpower the beast’s sphere. Confused, he turned his attention back on his skill, but as he did, the boss monster roared louder than ever before.

Derek’s eyes quickly shot back to the beast, and he looked on as it madly broke itself out of the ground and shot into the air with enough force to crumble the earth beneath. From there, it shot back to the ground and crashed into it with a heavy thud.

On the ground, in a crater of its own making, the beast rolled and thrashed about. Spatial arcs formed and shot out in all directions, destroying the surroundings even more. The power unleashed by the beast was devastating, and the entire area was beginning to resemble a wasteland.

Finally, the beast paused and fell to its back. Derek watched in awe as the beast’s razor-like silver claws clutched at and dug into its own chest. Blood and gore—more than Avery had been able to cause the entire time with his daggers—shot out from the boss because of its own attack. Whatever it was doing wasn’t enough.

The Starfury Leonarus slowly rolled over, its chest dripping blood, and limped up with its three remaining legs and paws. It tilted its head into the air and its chest began to expand—growing bigger and bigger, like a giant balloon. Derek tensed in anticipation of the roar that he knew was coming. But when the beast opened its maw, a torrent of flame was released into the air.

Even after a minute, the flame continued to pour out of its mouth and into the sky. The beast’s legs were shaky, and it looked like it was taking everything it had just to stay upright and release the flames. Finally, its three remaining legs couldn’t take it anymore, and the beast fell to the ground face first. The pressure from the flame continued, but without its open mouth to release it, small amounts of smoke and fire seeped out while its body expanded again.

‘Attack it!’ Silvi’s weak voice chimed in Derek’s head.

Without questions, Derek summoned Harbinger and shifted directly above the beast. He allowed Absolute Nullify to blink out, but the other skill had already lessened so much that he was no longer worried about it. His Multi-Strike still had a short cooldown left, but Sweeping Strike was ready to go. So, with as much void energy he could channel into his glaive, he reared back and just as he was about to launch the attack; he was met with a notification that stopped him in his tracks.

Congratulations! You have slain the Starfury Leonarus

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