Godsforsaken

Chapter 25: Tiphereth

“The boss of the fourth floor is called Tiphereth, the Radiant Wings," Annabella told us. She had her great-grandfather's notebook open in front of her, but she wasn't merely reading out loud. She was paraphrasing and adding her own thoughts on the matter and honestly she had an amazing voice for doing that sort of thing.

It occurred to me that one day she would be amazing at reading bedtime stories to her children. That prompted a flash of imagination, the lithe alchemist cradling a child and giving me a radiant smile, and I had to shake my head to clear it of such thoughts. Even if she was interested in me and even if she was an adventurer at heart, the thought was insane. I barely knew the woman, though it was hard to remember that with how much time we'd been spending together lately.

“It is a giant snake-like being with pairs of wings all along its body," she continued, oblivious to my fantasies.

She turned the book around and showed the illustration. I'd been continuously impressed by those. Either her great-grandfather had been an amazing artist or someone in his employ had been, because the sketches looked almost life-like. The last three bosses had ended up looking exactly like the sketches Annabella had shown us the night before and so I knew this one would be no different. It looked a little like a centipede, except instead of legs it had dozens upon dozens of wings along its length. Its head, meanwhile, was weird. It was difficult to make out just what the head was supposed to be because it was dominated by four forward-facing horns, two coming out the top of the head and two coming out from the bottom.

“The beast never truly lands," Annabella explained. “It sometimes dives low to attack in melee range, which is the only time that melee fighters can truly harm it. At all other times it flies over the arena in a circle, raining light and air spells down on its foes. Fighting it requires at least one person who is able to damage it and at least one other who is able to defend against its attacks.”

I nodded. “That shouldn't be too much of an issue.” And it wasn't. Alisha and Yume could use ranged magic, Annabella had her bow and Selene and I could use Qi Projection to send our strikes at if from afar and Qi Burst to throw knives and rocks at it. Alisha and Annabella together should also be enough to block both the air and light spells. “Do we know how nimble it is?”

“Not very nimble at all," Annabella said. “My great-grandfather hypothesized that if one could figure out how to bring siege equipment down into the dungeon it would trivialize the fight.”

I smirked at that and she frowned.

“Don't tell me you've got something like that.”

“I may or may not have a way to set up a ballista in case we need one," I said airily and Alisha snickered next to me.

“And how long will that take?" Annabella asked skeptically. “Hours?”

“Three minutes or thereabouts," I said.

She shook her head incredulously. “I know you're not one to joke about that, but good gods...”

“You'll see soon," I said. “Anything else to know about?”

“Just one thing," she said. “When the beast feels truly threatened it can summon one massive beam of light from the four horns on its head. The attack is devastating but it can't attack for almost a minute after using it, so if we manage to deflect it," she looked over to Alisha, who nodded, “then we can go all out for a time.”

“Well," I said. “I see how this thing would be a challenge, but our group seems to be fairly well prepared for it.”

“True," Annabella said. “With anyone else I would be terrified of facing this monster, but with all of you along I think we won't be having too much trouble.”

I smiled at her and said: “Alright then, here's the plan...”

**

The next morning we had a hearty breakfast and then headed downward through the clouds, which manifested as a thick mist now that we were inside them. I was extremely grateful the bridges were free of enemies, as fighting fast, nimble enemies on thin rope bridges with limited visibility would have been awful. It was particularly bad on this bridge, which just went on and on and on, gently sloping down towards a large shape gradually becoming visible in the mist.

After what felt like hours but was likely just minutes we got off the bridge and found ourselves in front of a building that looked very much like a temple, but with the originally domed roof completely torn down, only hints of it remaining. We'd found our boss room.

I approached what I expected to be the door leading to the room, the mists still swirling all around us and obscuring my vision. The mists had become less dense as we'd progressed but they still made it hard to see and it was only when I reached the door that I saw it.

The giant metal door was broken. It was bent inwards, as if a massive battering ram had been taken to it. One side only just barely hung on its hinges and the other was lying on the ground. The doors so far had all been the same and so I knew how much force was required to open these things. It must have taken a titanic amount of strength for something to have smashed it like this.

Selene ran into my back, not noticing that I'd stopped until she'd already bumped into me. “What's...? Oh shit.”

“Yeah," I said, my voice hoarse.

“What's wrong?" Annabella asked and came running. “Oh dear.”

Alisha and Yume had similar reactions.

Best case scenario was that we would go inside and find the boss tearing the cultists limb from limb, but...

I took a deep breath and went through the door to find a scene of utter carnage.

Beyond the door was not a trace of the mist hanging over the area. Everything was easily visible, so there was nothing to hide the bloodbath that had occurred here.

Tiphereth, the Radiant Wings, was a gorgeous beast. Or rather, it had been. The drawing had shown the shape of its body but it had failed to capture its sheer majesty. It was bigger than any living thing I had ever seen. All five of us together, laying on the ground lengthwise, would have been less than a tenth of its body length. The elite variant snake we'd fought on the third floor had been tiny compared to this beast.

The monster had an underbelly white as alabaster while the top of it was covered in golden scales. Its wings were more like those of a bird than those of a reptile and the individual feathers shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow, held together by a delicate framework of gold filigree. The head was very much like that of a dragon and the horns were translucent crystal, shifting through the same rainbow colors as the feathers. The only thing marring its beauty was the giant hole that had shaved off half of its head, the edges of the wound covered in rime. Darklight damage.

Aside from the titanic monster corpse there were three bodies strewn about. Or at least I assumed there were three bodies because I could clearly see three heads. The other body parts were liberally peppered all over the arena.

It was comforting to know that the cultists hadn't beaten the monster effortlessly.

“Oh goddess," Alisha whispered as she saw what was going on. It really was hard to decide which part was worse. The dismembered corpses that were part goat, part man and part cancerous growths or the giant winged rainbow snake with a hole through its head.

No, never mind, it was definitely the gargantuan monster.

The others had similar reaction and I waited until everyone had gotten a good gawk at the creature before I pulled out another dismantling gem.

“Hold on," Annabella said when I was about to throw it. “I want to see if I can puzzle out how long it's been dead.”

“Two or three days at most," I said. “If we had been here earlier the entire wound would have been covered in rime rather than only the edges. It will probably take another day or two for it to fully melt. And if it was more than a week old the boss would have respawned, right?”

“Right," she said. “Do you know what did this? I mean yeah, the cultists did this, but I've never seen ice magic behave like this.”

“Darklight," Yume said, then turned to me. “That was the name of the stuff that Dark Lord was using, right?”

“Exactly," I said. “Darklight burns like light magic but it's somehow cold at the same time. It burns through bodies and then leaves the wounds covered in frost.” Understanding dawned on Annabella's face. “Although I've never seen it cause this large of a wound. Whoever cast that must have been horribly powerful.”

“I don't think they were necessarily that strong," Syr said from beside me and I quickly asked Yume to connect everyone's minds to mine so the black-haired beauty could talk to all of us. “The Holy Maiden empowered these cultists. I think this was how they were able to use such a strong attack. Think of it like a Chosen One's miracles.”

“What, you're saying these cultists are a group of Chosen Ones?" Selene asked. She knew damn well just how strong Chosen Ones could be. She had been one. Arguably she was even stronger now, but that was only after months of adventuring.

“I don't think so," Syr said, not alleviating my worries as much as she had probably meant to. “Only two of them were given powers. Three of them were strong cultists but she didn't empower them. And the final two were fodder.”

“I remember you saying the fodder didn't have any mutations yet," I said.

She nodded. “Right.”

I gestured at the obvious signs of mutation on the three corpses. “Then I guess they're down to the fodder and the two empowered ones now.”

“That seems like a fair assessment," she said.

I nodded and then finally chucked the dismantling gem at the boss. I had been a little worried that one dismantling gem wouldn't suffice to take apart such a giant monster but I needn't have worried. The gem immediately went to work breaking the beast down and soon there was a pile of meat, a pile of bones, a giant pile of golden snake skin, fangs and horns from the head and a hundred and eight giant rainbow wings. Yeah, I counted. They ended up filling two entire bags of holding on their own.

“So," I said. “The most important thing right now is the fact that we're only a couple days behind the people we are supposed to catch. I fear that means we have little choice but to head deeper into the dungeon without rest.”

“Indeed," Annabella said. “As much as I would like to take a breather after the last two floors, we are finally in a position to catch up to these cultists.”

“Let's get to it, then," Yume said. Her voice was stoic, but the way her tails dragged behind her showed how she truly felt. I had to agree. After two floors I had hoped to spend at least a day on the outside. But the faster we pressed onward the sooner we'd be done.

**

On the far side of the arena we found a stairway leading downwards into the now familiar treasure room. To my surprise, it looked pristine. These cultists were apparently in so much of a hurry that they hadn't even bothered to ransack the treasures. I should have been happy they'd left it all but honestly the idea chilled me. Why were they in such a hurry? What was so important, so useful, that it was worth snubbing all these riches?

Because there were incredible riches. Not only had they left the boss' corpse, which was worth maybe a few hundred thousand mun at a very conservative estimate, they had also left everything in the treasure room. There was another small mountain of gems, these with major enchantments on them. There were too many to sift through so I just shoveled them into a bag and vowed to appraise them later. Off to the side was another grove of trees, but there was something else that had piqued my interest. There was a set of five rings arrayed on a stone pedestal and I pulled out my appraiser's loupe to check them out. They were called the Paladin's Ring, the Rogue's Ring, the Wizard's Ring, the Saint's Ring and the Ranger's Ring. I was immediately suspicious of those. That seemed way too fitting to be a coincidence and I asked Annabella about it.

“Great-grandfather wrote about these rings, yes," she said. “He didn't state exactly what they were for, but he did mention that they were very high level magic items.”

“They seem a little too fitting, don't they?" I said.

“Do keep in mind that the dungeon is alive," Annabella said gently.

“Of course I..." I began, then trailed off. “You're saying the dungeon decided to spawn these rings specifically for us.”

“Maybe it noticed that the cultists were ignoring the treasure room," she said. “And my family did, after all, stand watch over this dungeon for centuries. And right now we're here, trying to destroy a taint that is trying to take hold.”

“True," I said. “It's just...”

“You're suspicious of anything that seems a little too convenient," she said.

“I suppose," I said.

“Maybe we're just lucky.”

“Maybe.”

So I took a closer look at the rings.

The Saint's Ring enhanced a cleric's blessings and their magic. With this on, Alisha's blessing would affect us like that of a Saint, rather than that of a Minor Saint. The boost to her magic would of course also be welcome.

The Wizard's Ring simply enhanced a mage's spells and alleviated the mental strain caused by casting, which would be perfect for Yume.

The Ranger's Ring increased accuracy with thrown weapons and bows and enhanced eyesight slightly, the perfect accessory for Annabella.

The Paladin's Ring would make the bearer tougher and enhance their Intercession. Selene had never used that ability but the extra toughness would still be useful, especially if I stopped being bullheaded and actually left the protecting to her.

And finally, the Rogue's Ring was the oddest. According to the appraiser's loupe it would 'enhance the wearer's dexterity and increase the chance of hitting weakspots depending on the wearer's luck'. That was odd. The description made it sound as though luck was a measurable quality. Not that it really mattered. I had a feeling it wouldn't do much for me, given how unlucky of a guy I was. I looked up from the ring to see three women giving me loving looks and a fourth woman with longing in her gaze.

Well, maybe I wasn't that unlucky after all.

After handing out the rings I walked over to the grove of trees, the ones that had apparently stumped Annabella's ancestor. I used my appraiser's loupe on it to find out that they...

“This can't be right," I muttered.

“What is it?" Alisha asked. She'd been eyeing the fruits since we'd entered. And she had every reason to. They looked good, but weird. They had the general shape of cherries, except they were the size of an apple and entirely translucent. They were colorless, with only the slightest shimmer of blue in their center indicating where the seed was.

“Yume?" I asked and the fox girl came over.

“What is it?”

I handed her the loupe I had been using. “Use this to look at these fruits and then tell me I'm not going crazy.”

She took the loupe from me and examined the fruits. I saw her eyes flitting back and forth, telling me that she was reading the description the loupe was showing her. Again and again. Finally she swallowed, handed the loupe to me and then plucked one of the fruits and held it reverently.

“This is a meridian-cleansing fruit," she announced. “Meridians are the pathways Qi takes to travel through the body. But nobody is born with perfect meridians. These fruits will cleanse them of impurities.”

Alisha frowned. “Does that mean they're like the fruits you found in that dungeon you went to, the ones you had to fight a dragon for?”

The fox girl shook her head. “No. Those enhanced the elixir sea inside me, made my Qi stronger. These fruits do not strengthen, they merely allow for unobstructed flow. The end result is a massive boost to one's Qi abilities, yes, but they accomplish it in very different ways.”

“Are there other ways to cleanse meridians?" Selene asked.

“Certainly," Yume said. “It is a painstaking process that requires weeks of continuous meditation, but it can be done. These fruits, though? They do it immediately.”

“What are we waiting for?" Alisha asked, plucking one for herself.

Yume smiled at her. “This time I'll be the one to insist we save these seeds. If we can manage to grow these fruits we could make ourselves rich beyond measure by selling them in the Southern realms.”

I plucked another few of the fruits, handed one out to Selene and Annabella each, stowed some away, and kept one for myself.

“I guess that explains why your ancestor couldn't make heads or tails of these," I said to Annabella.

“True. We know that everyone in my family except me knew about Qi, but I doubt they knew enough to identify these.”

I nodded and bit into my fruit. It tasted like... light. Like an explosion of light in my mouth. An unfathomably powerful cleansing force rushed through my body, burning impurities away I hadn't even known I had. I actually felt the impurities squeezing out of my body, covering my skin, but before I could worry about the stuff staining my clothes the light burned it away completely, leaving me feeling like I had been reborn. The effect was far stronger than that of any of the other fruits I'd eaten on this journey and when I experimentally called Qi to my arms I was actually disturbed by how fast it managed to flow. I'd thought I'd gotten fast with it before but now it practically happened at the speed of thought. I shuddered to think what someone like Yume, whose Qi already answered at the speed of thought, would be capable of now.

The effect was so profound that not even Alisha commented on the fruit's flavor.

**

When we were all finished with the fruits and everyone had made sure to put the seeds away we headed down the stairs to the next floor.

I felt myself getting nervous despite myself. Not because we might be finding the cultists on this floor but because, as I had understood it, we were the first people since the party Annabella's great-grandfather had brought with him to set foot on this floor. And it was breathtaking.

The place had a crystal ceiling just like the other floors, but tree branches crisscrossed right under that ceiling, dimming the light that illuminated the floor. Most of the floor was covered in water. Blue, crystal-clear water. But this wasn't like the archipelago of the first floor. This was like the shallow waters around a lake. There was deep water in some areas but in most places the water was shallow enough that walking on the ground was possible. Most of the light didn't come from the ceiling, but from luminescent blue plants growing out of the water. The majority of these plants was small, but there were a few that were massive, taller than a person, and their light clearly lit a path forward.

The entire place was surrounded by the enormous trees that gave it shade and it all felt like a scene straight out of a fairytale.

“It's gorgeous," Alisha whispered reverently. I couldn't blame her. The sight kind of inspired that tone of voice.

“It is," Annabella agreed. “I'd read about it but I didn't think it'd be this beautiful.”

“So," I said, looking around. “Where are all the enemies?”

Everyone paused and looked around.

There were no enemies around us. The closest was a beast that showed up as a silhouette at the very edge of visibility. Everything else was deserted. Certainly whatever lived on this floor could be hiding within the sporadic ruins, but those were easy enough to avoid. So far the dungeon hadn't given us a choice but to fight the enemies in our path but this time there didn't really seem to be any of those.

“Maybe they're hiding under the water?" Selene said dubiously. She could see as well as any of us that the water barely rippled.

“I think it's much more likely that the cultists have killed everything within their path," Yume said.

“That would be rather concerning," Alisha said.

“Not necessarily," I said. “If they really are like Chosen Ones, they would have access to miracles to do the heavy lifting. But if they continuously expend them to make progress then by the time we catch up to them they might not have anything left.”

“Good point," the elf said, then turned to the princess.

“Can you tell us what enemies are on this floor?”

“Of course," Annabella said. “There are lizard creatures with huge talons hiding in the water," she paused to look at Selene, “but they are easy to spot by ripples in the water. There are also several huge types of monsters, one that great-grandfather called a Flower Wolf, a wolf larger than an ox whose body is overgrown with flowers, and a giant luminescent jellyfish that floats through the air. Both of those should be very easy to spot.”

I looked over at the silhouette on the horizon. Yeah, with a lot of imagination I could see that as a giant wolf. “Alright then," I said. “We've got some cultists to catch and no enemies to stop us in our immediate surroundings. I say we try to make some good time right now, skipping one of the rest spots if possible.”

“Agreed," Annabella said. “The less time we give them on this floor the more likely it is that they'll be exhausted by the time we catch up to them.”

**

And so that's what we did. We kept to the clearly outlined path which was slightly raised compared to the rest of the ground. Half the path was above the water and the other half was inches below the water, not even wholly submerging our feet, while most of the ground around us would have had us wade through ankle-deep water. Yume and I were walking in front, keeping a close eye on both the path ahead and our immediate surroundings. The last thing we needed was to step into some sort of trap in our haste.

Annabella was lagging behind a little, picking medicinal plants as she went. I spotted some of the lunar reed she'd spoken of before, some Bloodwort and some other plants I didn't know. I was going to ask her about them the next time we made camp, but if everything went according to plan that would still be a while.

Sure enough, it wasn't too long before we came across the first rest spot, but it was far from evening yet. Funny how much faster traversing a dungeon was if one didn't have to stop every few yards for another group of enemies. So we kept going, only pausing long enough to confirm that the ashes left behind of the last campfire weren't old. They weren't warm anymore, but they certainly weren't almost a hundred years old, which is what they should have been if Annabella's great-grandfather and his men had truly been the last people to come down here.

So not only did it confirm that the cultists were here, it also confirmed that they weren't that far ahead.

According to Annabella's journal the journey between the first and second rest spot was shorter than the one between the start of the floor and the first rest spot, but the closer we drew to the next rest spot the bigger the wolf in the distance became until it became obvious that we would have to get past the beast to reach the rest spot. In itself that wasn't too bad. The issue was that the closer we drew the clearer it became just how big of a monster it was. As we approached we could see how tall it was in relation to one of the large glowing flowers and the beast dwarfed it.

“There's something weird about it," Annabella said. Between the fruit we'd all had in the treasure chamber of the third floor and her Ranger's Ring her eyesight was wholly beyond human now. Even Alisha, with the enhanced senses that elves had, couldn't see as well as Annabella could.

“Weird how?" I asked.

“My great-grandfather's journal didn't have a sketch of one of these beasts, but the description of it was very vivid and it just doesn't fit. There's something like a cancerous growth on its forehead.”

I felt my blood run cold. “Does it look poorly grafted on?" I asked.

Alisha, Selene and Yume hadn't been overly concerned at first but when they realized what I was asking they simultaneously sucked in a breath.

“It does," Annabella said. “Do you know what this is?”

I took a deep breath and told her of the grafting experiments we'd seen the Dark Lord of Shub-Niggurath perform. I finished with: “So I'm guessing that means the cultists have made themselves a little watchdog to fend off pursuers.”

“It seems unreal," she said. “I mean, I don't doubt you, but...”

“The King in Yellow corrupts corpses, the Crawling Chaos corrupts minds and the Black Goat corrupts bodies," I said. “It's what they do. But let me lay your doubts to rest.”

I pulled out the tainted barghest pelts I'd had made with Martin's help. They had come with a note telling me that they were safe to touch with bare hands, so I was no longer overly concerned about handling them.

“Wolf pelts?" Annabella asked. “No. These are...”

“Barghest pelts," I finished. “More specifically, they're from barghests that had been corrupted by that Dark Lord of Shub-Niggurath.”

“Why did you keep them?”

“They protect against Darklight," I said. “So I'm going to have to insist everyone wear one when we engage that monster. After seeing what those cultists could do with Darklight I'm not taking any chances.”

“Alright," she said and accepted one of the furs.

The tanner, bless him, had sewn some thread into the furs so they could be tied around one's neck like a traveling cloak, which was just fine by me.

Once everyone was wearing one of the fur cloaks I pulled out the shield we'd looted from the Dark Lord's castle and tossed it to Selene. The shield was enchanted specifically to block and reflect Darklight attacks back at the caster and I had a feeling it would come in handy soon enough.

“Want to start us off?" I asked Annabella once we were all ready.

“Hit it or the canker?”

“The canker," I said. “Pretty sure that's what keeps the beast going.”

“Got it," she said and nocked an arrow.

She took aim, then took a breath, let it out, and let the arrow loose. It whistled through the air in a perfect path and hit something squishy. Even as far away as we were, the beast's roar was clearly audible, sending ripples all over the water. I couldn't tell whether it was because of the acoustics of the dungeon floor or the corruption of the Black Goat, but the roar had a weirdly distorted quality to it.

The beast was still a ways away and Annabella didn't give it any time to rest. It had already begun sprinting in the direction the arrow had come from and she just shot another arrow at it, making it stagger.

By the time the beast came close enough to get a good look at there were six arrows sticking out of the cancerous mass on its forehead.

Imagine a wolf larger than an ox. Now cover that wolf in the same luminescent blue flowers growing all around the dungeon floor. Give that wolf fur so coarse it resembles steel wires. That's what the Flower Wolf looked like. Or rather, that's what it would have looked like without the corruption spreading over it. There was a hideous, poorly grafted-on canker stretched all across the wolf's forehead, reaching down to cover most of its snout and wrapping around the back of its head and down its forelegs. Even worse, as I got a closer look I realized it wasn't the same cancerous mass I'd seen on the Hecatoncheir the Dark Lord of Shub-Niggurath had sent. This was worse. This mass was vaguely shaped like a person. At first I thought I was seeing things, and then the graft opened its eyes.

It was a person, twisted in horrible agony, goat-like eyes staring at us from atop the brow of the giant wolf monster. As I watched the flesh Annabella had peppered full of arrows bubbled, pushing the shafts out one by one as curled ram's horns grew out of the mass to give the wolf a bovine makeover.

And then the beast roared again and out of its mouth came a solid beam of Darklight. I was about to throw myself to the side but Selene countered it with the magic shield. For a heart-stopping moment I thought the shield wouldn't hold and Selene was going to get erased but then I saw the shield working its magic, not letting a single bit of the Darklight get through.

When she noticed that she wasn't being harmed Selene angled the shield a little and the beam of Darklight rebounded and sheared clean through the wolf's left forelimb, the wound coated in rime.

It stumbled and for a moment I thought she'd hobbled it but then the cancerous mass spread out to reach the stump and the flesh began to bubble. It moved forward and by the time its left paw needed to touch the ground it was already fully healed.

“Yeah, no," I said. “That's totally fair.”

The words seemed to burst a dam because Alisha and Yume began hurling everything they had at the beast. Fire snakes and tornado lances were flying at it and although each gouged a chunk of flesh out of the beast all the wounds were temporary and the beast simply advanced. When it was close enough it swung a giant paw at Selene, which she blocked with her shield and then snapped its jaw at me, which I hurried to scramble away from.

There had to be another trick to this. I knew I had something that would work, but...

I was still thinking when I felt an ocean of Qi explode from Annabella, more than I'd ever seen her use at once, and half a dozen sapphire swords went flying into the monster, embedding themselves in its flesh. Even these massive projectiles were slowly being pushed out by the beast's regeneration, but before they could move more than an inch Selene Qi Dashed onto the wolf's forehead, grabbed two swords and twisted them around before ripping them out of the wounds. One gushed blood, the other gushed the disgusting black gunk that came out of the Black Goat's cankers.

That, for the first time, truly fazed the creature. It staggered backwards and by the time those wounds started healing Alisha and Yume had already hurled another half a dozen spells at it. We were making progress but its regeneration was still truly frightening. If not even fire could slow that down, what could...

My eyes flew open wide as I realized the solution.

“Selene, keep it busy," I called out, then dug frantically for my lesser cloak of invisibility. It granted ten seconds of perfect invisibility, which ought to be enough. I hoped.

I donned the cloak and dashed around the creature, then pulled out the tool I had been thinking about. Next to the shield that could repel Darklight had been a few other treasures, one of them was a sword that would slow down the regeneration of followers of the Black Goat.

I drew the sword, dashed at the beast and readied a Qi Burst to ram it into its body, using my newly cleansed meridians and the accompanying boost of speed to draw in more Qi than normal, and then prepared to thrust.

Something caught the wolf's attention. Either my movements in the water or me drawing Qi had alerted it and it whirled around, knocking me over with its surprisingly rigid tail.

“Hey," Selene called out. “Over here!” Then she let loose a Qi Projection.

It used to take her several seconds to use this technique but between her training and the meridian cleansing fruit it took her less than a blink to send a slash at the creature, carving into its side and making it spin back around, smacking me in the face with its tail once again. This time I rolled with the motion and charged my attack again, going for a Qi Burst while the beast was still reeling.

My invisibility was long gone but it didn't matter because my sword struck true and there was a hideous hissing sound coming from the wolf's forehead, or more accurately from the canker on its forehead, and then something very odd happened. Most, but not all, of the wounds the beast had suffered seemed to be healing in reverse, opening up again as though they'd never been healed. I wasn't sure why it was only affecting some of the wounds and I was particularly annoyed at its paw not vanishing, but I was still glad to see results.

“Now!" I called out and we all sent powerful attacks at it.

Alisha and Yume sent spells, Annabella sent conjured sapphire weapons and Selene and I sent Qi Projections, mine wreathed in fire because that's what Helios Edge did.

The beast staggered under our barrage and sent out a last-ditch cascade of Darklight but I heard Alisha start the chant for her Protective Warmth miracle and Qi Dashed inside its perimeter before the bubble of warm safety exploded outwards and dozens of Darklight attack rained down upon it, none coming even close to piercing it.

The wolf kept raging for almost a minute before it staggered, having clearly exhausted itself. Alisha dropped the shield and I called out:

“Prominence Nova!”

The skill had started off taking several seconds and leaving me staggering, but now it came out nearly instantly and I barely felt winded. Four massive beams of searing heat slammed into the cancerous mass on the Flower Wolf's forehead, burning it and the skull underneath it away entirely before the beast finally collapsed.