Isaac appeared in front of the fleeing ranger already mid thrust. The ranger was caught by surprise but his spell that connected his feet to the ground was still active and he was yanked to the side. This meant that Isaac's sword left a long gash across the ranger's bicep and left breast, parting the leather as if it were not even there. Neither man waited or hesitated as they resumed their clash. The hatchet came up and hooked onto Isaac's sword as the ranger thrust his knife forwards with lethal intent. Isaac tried to make a horizontal slash towards where the ranger had moved to but his footing was poor for such a maneuver which led to far less force in the swing that he had wanted. Even in such an overextended stance, Isaac was far from being on the back foot. In fact, both of them knew that Isaac would eventually win unless the drow ranger was blessed by a miracle.

The ranger's knife went straight for Isaac's throat but instead of dodging, Isaac parried the knife with the bracer on his offhand. His bracer was left with its own gash but it hadn't managed to cut completely through the small reinforced dragon scales, not enough of them at least. Both men paused and locked eyes as they both found themselves in disadvantageous positions without an easy means of attack.

"You could always just let me go, it's not like I take part in the raids anyway. I just find them." The ranger offered Isaac with a forced hopeful look on his face.

"Not a chance." Isaac replied.

The ranger sighed. "It was worth a shot."

The ranger slid away from Isaac and kicked towards him. With the sudden increase in distance, the kick was bound to miss by at least five feet but it was never supposed to land. A spike of stone shot up out of the ground towards Isaac who just vanished and appeared directly behind the ranger. The ranger had foreseen the move however and swung upwards behind himself with the hatchet causing another spike to launch out of the ground towards where Isaac had just appeared.

Isaac twisted at the last moment which caused the spike to skip harmlessly off of his armor and impact the ceiling. The sudden shift in positioning caused him to miss where he was aiming and instead of piercing through the ranger's flank, he just left a gash across his back. He could still feel the ranger healing as he continuously spent mana in an attempt to keep himself from bleeding out. Isaac pulled a throwing spike out of his inventory and threw it at the ranger as he teleported again. The throwing spike bounced harmlessly off of the ranger's armor but it was enough of a distraction for his counter to be a fraction of a second slow.

Truth came up in a powerful uppercut that could have split Reality Shields into pieces. The ranger was yanked out of the way fast enough to keep the strike from cleaving the ranger's leg off but the new deep gash would help burn through his mana reserves and stamina faster. Any amount of blood loss was too much when fighting for one's life. A drop in blood pressure meant that less oxygen was getting to where it needed to be which meant that his muscles would get tired faster and his brain was one such muscle.

"Stop." Isaac ordered the shadows around the ranger with as much of his intent and focus as he could spare. He did not care that he was going to be burning through his mana reserves for as long as the command was in effect because he was going to end their confrontation in that moment. Isaac dashed forwards to close the new gap and brought his sword back down in a heavy downwards chop that should have cleaved the ranger in two.

The ranger surged with mana and his entire body was encased in stone, instead of just his boots. All of the stone surrounding him tried to yank him out of the way of Isaac's lethal strike with middling results. The force of the proper spell, combined with the fact that most of the space directly around the ranger was now stone, was enough to break through Isaac's command and move him. The problem for the ranger was that it had happened too late. Isaac's sword took the ranger's arm off at the shoulder despite the stone armor. Blood sprayed out of the wound as an arm and hatchet fell freely to the ground.

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Isaac turned so he was facing the ranger straight on once more as the ranger continued to be pulled away from him down the tunnel. The ranger's off hand reached up and stone sealed off the open wound. "Forwards." Isaac ordered the shadows behind and surrounding him. "Slow." He ordered the shadows surrounding and on the opposite side of the ranger.

"What-" The ranger started in surprise as he was suddenly nearly halted by an unseen force and Isaac was launched at him at a considerable speed. The ranger barely got his knife up in time to try and force Isaac to impale them both on each other's weapons. Isaac twisted his wrist and bent his arm, causing the hilt of Truth to move while keeping the point directly in line with the ranger's heart. The ranger's knife was forced out of the way by the base of Truth's blade and both weapons caught each other on their handguard and crossguard respectively. The ranger lacked the strength necessary to prevent Isaac from impaling him but his control over his position hadn't been entirely removed.

The ranger shifted to the side at the last second which would have caused Isaac's strike to hit him in a lung if Isaac hadn't seen it coming. Isaac had been waiting for the move and adjusted the tip of his sword right before he slammed into the ranger. Isaac's sword crushed the ranger's knife into his chest as its blade blew through his heart, breastbone, and stone as if nothing was even there. The ranger's stone armor cracked in two separate spiderweb patterns from Truth and knife impacting it with all of Isaac's considerable strength and speed courtesy of a command and his active boosting skill.

Both men stopped in place as time almost seemed to wait for them. "You were one tough bastard." Isaac told the ranger as his parting words to the standing dead man.

"And you are too strong to be human." The ranger told him and then his eyes rolled back in his head and the stone armor broke apart completely. With the ranger's consciousness and spell both gone, his lifeless body collapsed to the ground at Isaac's feet.

Isaac was breathing heavily as he lowered the amount of power that he was feeding Truth until it just went out by itself. As he did that, he mentally told all of the shadows that they could go back to whatever they were doing and stopped boosting his own power. If it wasn't for his strength, speed, and reaction time being boosted by over fifty percent, he wouldn't have been able to keep up with the ranger, even with his generous use of shadow-step. That ranger, with two legendary tier tools that doubled as weapons, had fought him off for an entire minute in total. He shook his head and headed off back towards where everyone else was still fighting.

—

Lenna slammed her aura into the group of three soldiers that were charging at her. One of them tripped and collapsed to the ground but the other two quickly positioned themselves and their shields between Lenna and their temporarily fallen comrade. The smoke in the cavern was starting to diffuse into the entire cavern but that was only making combat more solitary. As it spread out, it went from reducing the visibility in one space to almost nothing, to reducing the visibility in the entire cavern to less than a dozen feet.

Lenna charged at the group of soldiers to keep from losing any momentum. While one of them was down, she needed to get rid of at least one of the others. Three soldiers, all entirely focused on her, had the capacity to be more than she could handle without 'acceptable risks'. "Let my flames consume all before me." Lenna chanted and blasted the soldiers with a wave of fire. They instinctively ducked behind their shields to protect their eyes from the gushing flames. That was exactly what Lenna wanted. The momentary lack of vision on her was perfect for what she was about to do. She shouldered the one on her right with all of the momentum that she had built up from her sprint backed by her aura and mana enhanced strength. The soldier was tossed backwards a few feet which was enough to make him trip over their comrade who was still trying to get up. She used the impact to slow her lateral momentum and brought her sword up in an uppercut, which had enough force behind it to tip a loaded wagon, towards the only soldier within immediate range who was still on his feet.

Lenna's uppercut was met by the soldier's shield at a perfect angle to force her blade to skip off of it. The soldier didn't miss the opportunity to rotate and swing his own sword into Lenna's side. He moved a good bit faster than she did even if she had more than double, maybe closer to triple, the amount of force behind her attacks. The strike did nothing but hurt the soldier in the end as a shadowy tendril snapped out from her and into the shield that was still interposed between the soldier's core and Lenna.

The Oathbreaker, the Lady of Hellfire, reached out and grabbed the rim of the soldier's shield with enough grip strength to crunch non-reinforced steel. The shield held firm but that only served to ensure that so did her grip. Lenna turned away from the soldier and yanked the shield over her head towards the other two soldiers. The soldier attached to it went along for the ride as his shoulder was wrenched and he spent a full second completely airborne. He slammed down on top of his comrades just as a fourth soldier joined their secluded melee.

Lenna eyed the fourth soldier and the three crumpled ones at her feet. She knew that the new one wouldn't let her end any of the ones next to her without a fight, which would just allow them all to get back to their feet, and she also knew that their armor was more than capable of preventing her from killing them in one hit. Any lethal attacks would have to be made with precision, if she used her sword anyway. 'I think it's time to finish this.' She thought to herself and then took half a step back while gesturing upwards with her free hand. A one on one against a V'Nova soldier was something that she was more than capable of winning, even if it probably wouldn't be quick, so she took the opportunity that she had been given. "Hellflame strike."

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