Andrew Rowe - On the Shoulders of Titans

The right side of his face was a bloody mess, and a good portion of his chest and neck were covered with burns. His shroud had stopped the blast from being fatal, at least.

He awkwardly reached for the potion. I put it in his hand.

“Thanks,” he managed, drinking it and coughing. “You should go. Run for the door she came in, then teleport once you’re outside.”

I shook my head. “I’ve been working to see you again for five years. I am not letting you die here.”

Above us, Mizuchi hurled blasts of lightning at Sera, but she shaped them out of the way. They struck the walls and blasted apart chunks of stone.

I didn’t know how Sera was powerful enough to be countering Mizuchi’s attacks. She was clearly still fighting on the defensive, but she’d never been able to counter anything close to the level of Mizuchi’s attacks.

At the moment, I had more pressing concerns. “Retrieve: Healing Potion. Retrieve: Healing Potion.”

I laid out the two remaining potions. “Drink these. I’m going to see if I can help Sera somehow.”

I picked up Selys-Lyann.

Tristan grudgingly began to drink the potions, shaking his head. “You can’t beat her.”

“No.” I shook my head. “But I’m not alone.”

I pointed my sword upward.

It was a bad angle for trying to send a slash in Mizuchi’s direction, and I’d seen that it wasn’t powerful enough to do much to her in her current state, anyway.

Instead, I remembered what Keras had taught me.

I concentrated, forming a mana thread and connecting it to the sword’s runes, then reshaping the ice energy around the blade. I formed it into a single point around the tip, as if I was planning to thrust.

Mizuchi flew toward Sera, raising a claw that glimmered with mana.

Sera flew to the side to dodge, but the claw was a feint.

Mizuchi’s tail snapped upward, tearing off one of Sera’s stone wings.

Unbalanced, Sera fell from the sky.

Mizuchi descended after her, ready to strike.

I struck first.

My ring of jumping wasn’t recharged yet, but the fall from the last room had made it clear that I didn’t really need it.

I jumped, blasting myself upward with transference mana, and jammed my sword into Mizuchi’s wing.

Even with the added force of transference mana pushing me, the sword failed to pierce her scales.

But a physical attack bypassed her shroud, and that meant the ice that I’d been gathering into a single point connected straight with her wing.

Mizuchi hissed as the ice blasted over her wing and began to spread further. She lost her focus on the attack and flew to the side, then descended slowly to the ground.

I flew backward from the force of the impact, but landed on my feet.

Sera landed less gracefully, smashing into the ground on her back. She groaned and pulled herself to her feet a moment later, but with only one wing intact, she couldn’t fly.

Mizuchi shook herself as the ice spread, then groaned, took a breath, and emitted a blast of flame from all around her. The ice melted.

Again, one of the layers of her shroud vanished as she emitted the flames, confirming the pattern that I’d suspected.

Every time she breathed in for an attack, she was weakening her own shroud.

But it didn’t last long. I could already see a new layer of the shroud forming around her.

Still…maybe it was enough.

Sera was standing again. She conjured a ball of lightning and hurled it at Mizuchi, but Mizuchi simply walked into it. The attack hit her shroud and deflected out of the way without effect.

“ Is that the best you can do, little girl? You really think that invoking a single monster is going to be good enough to beat me?”

Mizuchi flew forward as a blur, far too fast.

A terrified voice yelled something from the doorway. “Sera, jump!”

Mizuchi swung her tail at Sera an instant later.

Sera jumped over the strike, then swung her remaining wing and smashed it into Mizuchi’s chest.

The serpent staggered backward, hissing. “ Oh, I’m going to kill that bitch. Researcher!” She turned her head toward the doorway.

Researcher was cowering there.

Mizuchi tilted her head downward. “ I warned you what would happen if you betrayed me.”

“I…” Researcher shook her head. “Corin is my friend. I don’t want you to hurt him anymore. Or anyone else.”

I felt something in my heart give way when I realized what was about to happen.

I charged at Mizuchi swinging, but I was far too slow.

“ You don’t get to have friends. You don’t get to have anything, in fact. Researcher, I break our contract.”

I expected Researcher to vanish. To die the moment her contract was broken.

But I hadn’t been paying enough attention. Neither had Mizuchi.

“I never planned to beat you by invoking one monster.” Sera turned toward the Mizuchi. “So I made another contract. Researcher, I invoke your power.”

A brilliant nimbus of light engulfed Sera for the briefest of moments, then collapsed inward toward her face. When the light faded, her eyes continued to glow.

That was what Sera had been doing when she’d rushed toward the doorway. She’d made a contract with Researcher, allowing Researcher to survive without Mizuchi.

Mizuchi howled and rushed toward Researcher, but Sera formed a whirlwind of mana that shot herself directly into Mizuchi’s path.

When Mizuchi swept her tail at Sera, the attack missed by a large margin. The next three swipes of her claws were equally ineffective, with Sera somehow anticipating them and stepping out of the way.

She’s using Divination to anticipate Mizuchi’s movements , I realized. Researcher must have been doing that before, which is why she knew to warn Sera to jump. And now she’s given Sera that ability.

Mizuchi stepped back and pulled her hands together, firing a wide blast of flame that enveloped nearly the entire half of the room that Sera was in.

Sera didn’t have nearly the power to counter it directly, even with Vanniv’s power. Instead, she fired a much smaller blast of ice, which burrowed a small hole in the fire blast. She stood in the exact spot it cleared, with the fire blast washing over her without causing damage.

She countered with a blast of lightning, which hit Mizuchi directly, but didn’t deal any damage.

I did notice something potentially important, though. It wasn’t the first layer of Mizuchi’s shroud that deflected the lightning; it went through two layers before deflecting off the third.

In that moment, I developed a hypothesis, but I couldn’t be certain about it.

I moved to Tristan. He was back on his feet.

I handed him my sword. “Next time she takes a breath, I want you to hit her immediately, as hard as you can. Push the ice aura into her if you can.”

He nodded. Even after the potions, he was still in bad shape, and half his face was still covered in blood.

His right eye was closed. I suspected it was ruined.

He took the sword anyway and walked closer to where Sera and Mizuchi were still exchanging blows.

Sera was still anticipating Mizuchi’s strikes, but she lacked Mizuchi’s raw speed.

Mizuchi swung a claw, extending her aura much like Keras would, but forming three massive blades rather than a single one. Sera formed a shield of ice and blocked the attack, then responded with a burst of fire.

The fire wasn’t effective; it reflected off Mizuchi’s shroud, just like the lightning had. But it did teach me something. I was almost certain the fire deflected off the first layer of the shroud that it hit, rather than the third.

That was enough to gamble on.