Kelly and Londo had come to the same conclusion long before anyone gave the order: if anyone was going to stand a chance at slowing Harvey down, even for a moment, it had to be them. The two of them moved out from their section of the battlefield, weaving through rubble and drifting dust as they headed toward the others already engaged in the fight.

Ahead of them, Alen, Liam, and Dame were struggling to keep Harvey's monstrous puppet from tearing the entire Underside apart. Meanwhile, the remaining defenders continued escorting civilians from the Shelter up toward the temporary escape route. But the truth was stark: even with everyone working together, they were barely keeping Harvey's attacks at bay.

The scale of the puppet had grown so extreme that all of them were being forced into separate pockets across the battlefield. They attacked from differing angles, hoping to find some blind spot, some weakness, but every attempt met the same end, failure. Harvey's twisted creation outpaced them with ease.

Dame streaked across the ground in blurs of lightning, narrowly avoiding Dark Pulses that exploded behind him and scorched entire chunks of stone away. Alen propelled himself side to side using bursts of fire, his cloak singed and torn. He hurled several flames outward, trying to target the only clear weakness Harvey displayed: the exposed head nestled in the puppet's chest, his eyes darting around like a wicked parasite buried inside the creature.

Yet the flames never reached. The puppet's limbs, dozens upon dozens, extended, twisted, and hardened into a shifting shield-wall. Anything remotely approaching Harvey was blocked, redirected, swallowed, or smothered by the dark mass.

Which was why Alen had stopped trying to hit Harvey altogether. Dodging, avoiding, keeping distance… that had become his sole focus. Because if he slipped even once, one limb would crush him instantly.

Everyone noticed the same weak point, but none of them could reach it.

Londo and Kelly knew that if there was ever a chance to strike, it was now while Harvey was concentrated on destroying Dame and Alen. They clasped their hands outwards, their palms aligning, wind and fire spiraling into formation. Kelly layered her darkness around it, Sophie's techniques echoing subtly through her movement even though Sophie herself wasn't here.

Four elements fused and twisted together, their strongest combined spell. The air vibrated around them as the pressure shifted, heat and turbulence forming a rotating sphere that they launched forward with a shout of effort.

For a moment, the attack seemed promising, its rotation tearing some of the shadowed material away from the puppet as it pressed forward.

But then the puppet's enormous head tilted downward.

Its stone jaws opened.

Dark magic condensed inside its maw like the forming of a newborn star. The beam that released was immediate and overwhelming, an annihilating torrent that cut through the combined spell as though it were a candle in a storm. The blast slammed into the ground, blowing apart stone and metal, the shockwave rippling outward hard enough to make even Londo stumble backward.

They weren't alone in their failure.

Liam had been circling, holding the all-cutting sword with a desperation he hadn't felt in years. If anything was capable of piercing the puppet entirely, it was this weapon. He knew it, he had felt its edge slice through barriers nothing else could dent.

But he, too, struggled to get close.

When he sprinted in and swung, a limb rose to block him. Liam pushed through the first layer, slicing straight through the darkness. The blade continued into the stone beneath, carving deep, yet that was as far as it went. The arm was simply too thick; he could not cut all the way to Harvey.

He retreated and lunged again, but more limbs shifted around the puppet, swirling like a living maze of darkness. They responded instantly to his movement, always intercepting him before he drew near.

Even without the system to warn him, Liam felt the danger. One wrong movement and the puppet would tear him apart.

'I can't reach him… none of us can,' Liam thought, sweat dripping down his brow. 'Is this the strongest enemy we've ever faced? Stronger than any mage, any beast, any clan…?'

B, on the other hand, produced the most meaningful results. Every large-scale blood attack she unleashed blew massive gaps into the puppet's mass, dispersing shadows far better than fire, wind, or lightning. Yet even she was overwhelmed. There were simply too many limbs, too many moving parts, too much attention aimed at preventing her from gathering the time needed to launch a decisive strike.

B could injure it more than anyone, but not often enough or fast enough to matter.

Eventually, Harvey realized it too.

His low, distorted voice boomed outward, amplified by the puppet's body. Every fighter on the battlefield froze for half a second as his rumbling laughter filled the Underside.

"I'll admit," Harvey said, his tone heavy with amusement. "For a moment, I wondered if you might surprise me. But it seems even with all of you combined, I have grown far stronger than expected."

From the puppet's shoulders, two limbs rose, long, thin, spider-like appendages that stretched into the sky. At their tips, dark magic formed, swirling inward toward a central point.

It happened too fast.

Those limbs shot outward, whipping through the air with terrifying precision. The first coiled around the massive stone pillar that B had created, the one supporting dozens of civilians near the top. The second limb tightened immediately after, cracking the base.

A third and fourth limb shot forward, slamming into the upper structure.

The pillar shattered.

Cracks raced up the stone in a spiderweb pattern before the entire structure gave way. The top half collapsed, fragments dropping in chunks. People screamed as the platform fell out beneath them.

Dozens plummeted.

Londo's heart sank. Kelly gasped. Liam and Dame lunged forward instinctively, but they were too far.

Alen reacted first, blasting forward on a burst of fire. He flung out every fire spell he had left, forming fiery explosions beneath the falling civilians in a desperate attempt to cushion their descent. But it wasn't enough, not even close.

Dark beams rained upward from the puppet, piercing the falling figures. Sparks of blood and torn cloth filled the air as bodies were struck mid-fall, shredded before they reached the ground.

"No!" Liam yelled, sprinting forward with the sword raised even though he knew he couldn't reach them in time.

Dame electrified himself and shot through the air like a bolt, but even he was too slow. The dark beams were relentless, tracking every falling silhouette.

Harvey's laughter vibrated through the battlefield again.

"You see?" he said. "You cannot protect them. And soon, you will not be able to protect yourselves."

****

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