Joseph

Just as with the fire-based Nation Boss he had practically beaten solo, this was an enemy he practically hard-countered, simply because he, ultimately, was entirely immune to fire, even the paper that gave him life, serving as both his head and heart, rendered entirely immune to the flames.

He was confident about this fight … or rather, he used to be, until about five seconds after the monster showed up.

As durable as he might be, as high as his heat resistance was compared to the ground he could see melting in the distance, the serpent still managed to scare him.

Perhaps he could ask to borrow Ascalon?

But the spear was already in use by the one other person who might be able to attract and hold the World Boss' attention, and their need for it was far greater …

***

Ogier

That was a big snake.

A very big snake.

And somehow, he'd wound up stuck with the task of holding it in place, his feet glued to the ground by the force of his Skills, the borrowed Ascalon clutched in his hands, fused with the infinitely more lethal Gae Bolg, staring down the gullet of the titanic snake as it glared at him, the one standing closest to it, curling in on itself …

Then it launched itself forward, shooting across the intervening space before he could blink.

Rather than trying to stop a maw large enough to swallow a city block with his lance, he thrust out his right wrist, manifesting the [Mountainous Shield] in an instant before the monster swept over him, the side of Apophis' mouth colliding with the shield and tearing against the nearly immovable object, rather than scoping him up and sweeping him down its gullet …

The World Boss yanked itself back even as Ogier thrust the lance at it, blood trailing from the corner of its mouth, massive droplets splattering across the ground to immediately form puddles … but Ogier was unconcerned with any of that, the wound he'd inadvertently struck had already drenched him in the crimson liquid.

He spat, trying to get the metallic taste out of his mouth as the monster pulled back, too quickly for him to be able to reach it with Ascalon even as he jabbed at it.

So, how are you going to respon- …

Apophis launched itself once again, barely a single blink of an eye having passed in between the retreat and renewed attack, this time tearing through the desert with its lower jaw, ready to swallow him whole and bypass the conjured shield by simply eating him along with the land he stood upon, only to hammer into the pillar of reinforced stone that Ogier stood upon.

[Immovable] wouldn't have been a very good Skill if one could bypass it simply by striking the land, now would it?

Now, the beast's maw was too massive for him to reach at any point, and if he threw Ascalon down its throat, he wouldn't be able to get it back until the end of the fight … so he dropped the spear, drew Cortaine in a flash and hurled that instead, the short sword vanishing within the beast amidst a spray of blood that darkened the fiery glow that had previously emenated from there.

Then, he snatched Ascalon out of the air before it could even hit the ground.

From one moment to the next, Ogier's world became fire, orange at first, then blue, before the flames turned a pure, incandescent white so bright he was unable to even perceive the roiling tongues of fire, all of it simply whited out by the impossible shine that attempted to burn out his eyes … emphasis on attempted.

After all, "Ascalon" was far more than just a weapon that had once slain a dragon; it was a weapon built to slay dragons. As well as anything else with mastery over the elements.

The flames dimmed, briefly, the light dying down just barely long enough for him to begin to see his surroundings, to recognize that he was now "merely" surrounded by burning sand, Apophis nowhere to be seen, and then the very tip of the beast's tail slammed into his side, a wall of scales taller than most city walls sweeping him off his feet and hurling him off into the horizon.

… Shit.

In hindsight, [Immovable] would have been a good place to invest Boosts in; it might have let him use the Skill even when he wasn't aware of an incoming attack.

Though being launched like that did have a silver lining, a tiny, tiny one. He'd been hurled out of the field of fire and now had a perfect view of Apophis launching itself past the point he had been defending.

***

Joseph

That snake was fast. Too fast. But not in the sense that it could move from place to place at high speed, it wasn't quite that bad.

However, it could lash out at anything within its reach in the blink of an eye, striking and retreating in barely a second.

And it had launched Ogier as though shooing away a gnat, leaving Joseph to step into his place.

[Roots of the Mountain] anchored him to the depths of the Earth, the armor plates of rock and metal that had been covering him already doubled in size in an instant, going from heavy plating that he was still able to move in to something that was only a couple of steps above outright being turned into a statue … yet when there was no need to move from this spot, why even leave himself the option?

Apophis was already lunging at him when Joseph triggered [Legacy of Talos], beginning to grow and grow, metal infusing his body beneath the armor and leaving his head high enough to look through the top floor window in a seven-story building when the serpent hammered into him.

Its lower jaws slammed into his shins while the massive fangs tore huge chunks out of his shoulders as they passed, then slammed into his broad back and began to pour molten venom into his torso, quite literally inflating him … and achieving precisely nothing.

Tongues of flame burst from between Joseph's armor plates as he scrambled to twist himself in a way that would allow him to grasp a hold of the fangs even as they were tearing up his insides.

And with that, Apophis was stuck, its two prominent venom fangs both piercing his body and held fast by his efforts, wrapped in immense fists of stone and bronze.

The World Boss thrashed, titanic body flashing back and forth across the ground, the desert trembling as though in an earthquake, sandstorms blasting across the vast expanse every time its coils crashed through a dune … yet there was one place the monster didn't move, one place where it was anchored to the very planet itself … that head wasn't moving. Ever.

Or at least not for a very long time.

***

Tristan

The plan for this fight, or rather, my part in it, was simple and straightforward.

Use [Focussed Approach] to temporarily unlearn everything I did not need on the battlefield, and instead pour all that potential into a single topic.

Combat.

To be specific, my kind of combat.

Teleportation, sending attacks back through portals, shapeshifting, opening portals inside the enemy, spellcasting, combining spells, creating grant spells and anchoring them to the land itself, ready to lash out the moment the World Boss showed its ugly mug …

It wouldn't give me any actual power, but it would increase my lethality by a factor that was, quite frankly, beyond what I'd been able to nail down.

Automatically using all my powers to their literal greatest effect was, in a word, broken.

In an instant, the world became so much clearer, my path forward so much more obvious, and my actions were suddenly practically effortless.

Casting [Animal Transformation] and becoming a peregrine falcon was something I was proficient in, something I'd been proficient in for quite some time … yet even in that simple action, I could feel the difference; comparing my previous "mastery" to my current state was akin to equating Van Gogh's Starry Night with a kindergartener's finger painting.

My brain could suddenly fully interpret the new spectrums my raptorial eyes could perceive, my wings beating the instant I transformed, a halfhearted leap into the air transitioning into a graceful sweep skywards, the wind whipping past redoubling as I cast [Tailstorm] the instant I could use it, the fusion of [Tailwind], [Century Storm] and air-resistance reducing [Quicksilver Momentum] catapulting me to nearly supersonic speeds.

Beneath me, the desert spread out, the sands seeming to go on forever … but it was not the desert flown over the last few days, when I'd been trying to get as many portal locations as possible.

The Sahara had transformed into a vision of hell, a titanic serpent thrashing like mad, its immense bulk slowly catching fire as scales ignited, the flames traveling down its body and turning it into an inferno, embers flying with every motion, mixing with the sandstorms created by the beast's passage …

And yet, for all its power, Apophis had found itself stuck. First, stopped by Ogier, then by Joseph, and as long as we, well, they, could keep it that way, that beast would die before ever being able to inflict much damage.

A nice and perfect target … weeeeeeell, it was wiggling around so much that accurately targetting it was as much a matter of luck as skill, even in my current state, but as long as one wisely stayed out of range, lashing out at it was about as safe as anything possibly could be, in the current day and age.

But seeing as any misses would only tear up empty desert, it was worth a shot.

And I did believe I'd perfected the kinetic strike in a way that wouldn't make the System interfere, without requiring me to use Ogier as a projectile.

In fact, speaking of the man … I glanced off towards the right and saw him there, at the end of the massive furrow he'd torn into the sand, running to return.

He was many things, "functionally indestructible" chief among them, but he was hardly fast.

I opened a portal in front of him, the other end automatically appearing near me, that limit of my abilities an endless annoyance … but it wasn't like he'd mind getting dropped from a few kilometers up, not after I'd launched him at the ground from orbit.

As he fell towards the ground, I returned my focus to my own efforts.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Another portal, this one to the previously-useless storehouse full of tungsten rods, half-assembled railguns, and other stuff that had seemed like an excellent idea at some point but had been discarded once it became clear that it wouldn't work for one reason or other.

A telekinetic spell pulled one of the rods off the top of the pile and made it fall through the portal, the way it was weighted on one end ensuring its flight rapidly stabilized and stood straight before it reached the ground for the first time.

And then, I dropped it again. And again. And then twice more.

As the Rod from God, a title that really no longer seemed to apply to its current, reduced state, was on its final fall, I realized something that would have had me slap my forehead, had I not needed my wings to stay in the air.

Apophis isn't Cipactli.

And therefore, anything that wound up in its maw would not be automatically destroyed, allowing me to do this.

When I opened up the next portal in the sky, I opened yet another below it, barely a meter between the two, the rod appearing and vanishing in the blink of an eye, even that brief instance sending me tumbling from the wind whipped up by its passage, emerging into its final resting place a split second later, rammed down Apophis' throat.

… okay, that sounded dirty.

But it was effective. Oh, it was effective.

Apophis had been periodically unleashing its flaming breath in an attempt to dislodge Joseph, turning the desert into glass and spraying molten droplets in the direction of Zerzura, one more issue that limited everyone save Joseph and Ogier to ranged attacks only … however, this time, it was a stream of blood and pulped organs that sprayed across the sands, chocking off the beast's furious hiss of rage.

That was when the serpent yerked its head back, the crack of its breaking fangs ringing out across the desert like … I'd have normally compared a loud sound like that to a gunshot, but this was more like an impacting meteor. A real one.

Blood still streaming from its maw, the World Boss reared back, two new venom fangs formed from fire so compressed it looked solid, incandescantly bright and nearly impossible to look at while the sparks that had previously been trapped in its obsidian scales blew outward, scattering across the sands as far as the eye could see and erupting into massive, towering pillars of flame, only to vanish barely a few seconds later, well before I was done pulling out the liquid nitrogen canisters in the hope they'd be able to extinguish them, sinking into molten pits while leaving behind spindly ridges and bridges of flash-cooled stone, impossibly tiny and fragile passages connecting tiny islands of safety, while the monster sat amidst a massive pool of molten sand and stone, glaring at Joseph and Ogier, who had managed to scramble up onto the nearest pillar of safety.

So that was the second phase of Apophis.

The floor was lava. Literally.

Wonderful.

***

Sundiata

The plan for the second phase was relatively simple, all told.

Wait for it to trigger, then hit the beast with everything.

Even if the first phase was more lethal, with harder-hitting wide-area elemental attacks, it was the second phase that had been the problem in the previous battles. The World Boss, reshaping the battlefield to suit itself ruined almost all plans they'd made, as well as all the plans they could have made, not to mention the way they were all quite literally forced out of their element … the monster might also lose many of its stronger attacks, but also gained the potential to kill far more if not slain immediately.

Apophis' tail flicked out, shattering half a dozen pillars behind it, causing it to collapse into the molten stone along with the walkways that had been connecting them.

Granted, there was an entire desert full of the same, but if this fight went on even half as long as the previous ones had, they would be left with a very, very big area consisting purely of lava, and if Apophis didn't deign to grace the edges of that molten pool with its presence, then fighting it would be very difficult.

If it did attack, then there would only be incredibly brief periods in which the beast could be engaged before it took out the pillars any fighters would be standing.

Sundiata [Connected to the Land], the Skill letting him see even what his eyes couldn't. Among other things, it immediately confirmed that the rock plateu Zerzura was sitting upon was the only large one surviving, and even that status had been won only due to its existing under his protections.

He could also sense spells being anchored into some of the pillars that were further back, and would not be reached for a while yet, readying an attack much more powerful than could be directly cast.

But Apophis was mostly focusing on those lashing out at it from the edges of the nearest intact platform, only to flee every time even a light attack collapsed that platform.

Brilliant rays of light and arcs of lightning hammered into the beast, tearing scales and ripping flesh.

Impossibly thin edges of energy flashed from swords to carve thin lines through muscle and bone alike, leaving wounds that only seemed to bleed long after they'd been struck, tearing open whenever the beast moved.

But there was another thing that jumped out to Sundiata, now that he was watching it move freely.

There was something wrong with that snake; the way it moved was … it was simply unnatural.

Sundiata knew snakes. Granted, even the largest cobra he'd ever seen was infinitely smaller than the sun-devouring serpent, but certain commonalities still existed.

Snakes moved differently from the World Boss.

Yes, they both struck the same way, keeping the back end in place, using it to launch their front end and venomous fangs at whatever they wanted to kill … but that was where the similarities ended.

When a snake wanted to move to another place, it moved its entire body. Some slithered, others seemed to practically dance through the sky as they vaulted across the desert sands in a way that minimized contact with the searing hot ground, others still could even glide between trees, yet ultimately, they all moved.

Apophis … well, it simply didn't. It hadn't even so much as tried to use its wings.

Or rather, it had not used them for anything other than stabilizing itself when it reared up.

It … it was too long, Sundiata realized. Too big, too … too everything.

The World Boss struck with its head, it struck with its tail, but it never struck with its entire body.

Because it couldn't.

For all its size, its proportions were wrong. A small insect- or mouse-eater could get away with being so long relative to its width, but something that big?

This thing, on the other hand?

When it wasn't actively slithering forward, trying to move its entire body would see it twisting itself into knots.

And that made this far easier.

Sundiata grinned and connected to the city beneath his feet, hurling it across time and space and onto the beast's back. Well, right next to it.

The "on its back" was the next part of the process.

He rammed the bottom end of his staff into the walls of Zerzura and triggered [Dominion].

Rock surged up from beneath the lava, exploding through the surface in a spray of molten droplets, piling onto and over each other, rapidly building a literal mountain atop the beast's body in a place that wasn't being moved, instead serving as an anchor … but it was not enough to hold it down. Not yet, at least.

With no apparent external cause, more stone began to pile onto the beast, rapidly forming into a fortress resembling a six-pointed star, vast enough to hold the population of a city and with walls high enough to make an elephant appear small by comparison.

And then, the figure appeared above the building, falling towards it like a meteor.

***

Miller

The good part about not fighting another storm monster was that he could use [Airburst] to throw himself around, and even fly.

The bad part was that he was now out of excuses to not use [Airburst] as a means of flying.

It had only taken him half a dozen of the flameless explosions to hurl him far enough to reach the desired position above the great big target built by both Emperor Keita and the Golem of Prague.

From there, he let himself fall the last five hundred meters, fist cocked back more as a matter of principle than anything else, every boosting Skill he had available burning at full until he hit the ground and threw his punch, triggering [Mountainbreaker] at the instant of contact.

And the world beneath him shattered.

Rock splintered and boulders burst, jagged cracks shooting through a monument of magical power that should have survived even a nuclear blast partially intact, an artificial cliff that turned into a tremendous shotgun blast of rock fragments, forced down and into Apophis' body by the combined weight of half a dozen Skills, none of them his, the combined displeasure of these lands' emperor, of the legendary rulers who were here as guests alone yet equally invested in seeing this beast erased.

A spell triggered, yanking him out of position, replacing him with a certain German King, the man's impossibly sharp sword, and a lethal combination attack.

Standing atop the city walls of Zerzura, the city having been moved just prior to his impact, Miller watched as Apophis' body exploded into bloody mist, the part he'd shredded ripped to pieces by von Bern's Skills.

Apophis' hiss of fury rolled across the lava lake like thunder … or at least that was what Miller had thought. That was when the beast's wings beat properly for the very first time, and everything in front of the portion they'd collectively torn to pieces lifted off into the air with a nauseating crunch, leaving behind the back

***

Fionn

Well, now he'd seen everything.

Creatures that got cut in half were either supposed to heal in a magical way that required one to figure out how to get around it … or they were just supposed to die.

Damn, what would it take to kill this thing?

He could see Tristan in the distance, flying about in bird form, not doing much. Though knowing him as Fionn did, he could easily judge that the young man was busy trying to figure out whether or not attempting another kinetic strike would be worth it.

Leaving him to do that, Fionn cast [Century Storm] so he could use its winds to fly, then used telekinesis to tug upon Ascalon, the spear that sat in Ogier's hands.

The man's grasp tightened in response at first, so Fionn gave two more soft tugs, not trying to tear it free but rather trying to communicate even across all the distance that separated them that he needed the weapon.

A couple of seconds later, the message was received, and the weapon that was the fusion of Saint George's lance and the most lethal spear of Irish history, separating in his hands, Gae Bold turning into a crimson orb of energy and vanishing into his body while Ascalon lay in his hands, and the storm began to carry him skyward.

Apophis' fiery fangs crumbled away, condensing into an orb at the center of the beast's maw, eyes gleaming with malevolence, focussing on him, making it abundantly clear where that fireball was going to end up … and Fionn could not care less. Not when he had Ascalon.

A bolt of flame the length of a battleship burst from the beast's mouth, hammering into him, only to simply flow past him. Though the following tumble through the sky, owing to the disruption of the winds he had been riding, made him grimace.

Perhaps that had been a mistake. But it had been a perfectly survivable one.

A twist of his body and a gust of wind hurled him out of the path of the next one, heat washing over him but still not harming him, the fire itself too far to mess with the air currents carrying him.

And after that, he was already too close, flashing past the beast's head, its jaws snapping shut, catching only empty air …

Fionn manifested Gae Bolg and drove it into the joint of Apophis' wing, then flung himself away before the feathery appendage could smash into him, hearing sickening crunches as spikes began to grow from the spear and through the beast's body.

He might have learned from bitter experience that the weapon was nowhere near as lethal against gigantic monsters as it was against other humans, and getting it back out of the carcass afterward was a nigh-insurmountable task worthy of song … but he did not need to slay the beast right now.

He merely needed to stop it from flying.

And he had achieved that and more. Sounds like cracking twigs rang out as the wing continued to beat, the spines tearing through the flesh, breaking beneath the force of its musculature, yet more were sprouting within, some breaking and further filling the limb with razor-sharp fragments, others surviving to lengthen and widen and tear everything to pieces. Another wingbeat nearly sent the serpent tumbling, having one wing suddenly filled with needles of broken bone, destabilizing its flight, more and more beginning to poke through from within, red blood staining white feathers, the jerky, stuttering wingbeats punctuated with ever more crimson liquid pilling forth …

When the end came a few seconds later, it was almost as though the spear itself had said enough and unleashed a final burst of power, hundreds of fully-formed needles errupting from every point on the wing, from its tip to the point where it met the torso, man-sized, blood-drenched spears turning the wing into something resembling a murderous cactus, ending the limb's usability once and for all.

Apophis, or at least the tiny part of it that had taken to the skies, plummeted back down to Earth, hammering into the ground like a meteor, lava geysiring skywards … and nothing further happened for a long moment.

A large bubble erupted in front of where the monster's nostrils should be, more lava splashing, then a second, the creature's back end starting to madly thrash amidst the molten stone …

Was that thing drowning in the lake it had created?

It seemed that way, certainly.

Fionn stayed there in the air for a long moment, lightning beginning to crackle as the storm fully ramped up, but when the beast's nameplate vanished, he knew he no longer needed to worry. The beast was dead … and the land was still far more thoroughly ruined than any of the two previous World Bosses had managed. At least it had happened in a desert …

***

Charlemagne

Approaching the edge of the city walls, he peered down at the corpse of the World Boss, slowly sinking into the molten stone at the bottom of the chasm.

"It doesn't look as though it is burning, even in death," he observed. "It should be possible to retrieve once everything has had time to cool."

With that, he spun on his heels and began to walk to where the rest of the Frankian delegation was waiting aside a portal.

Tristan made a small gesture and fixed up the entirety of the small but noticeable blemishes Apophis had managed to inflict upon the city before they stepped through as one, soon spreading throughout the Unterberg, all following their own rituals for relaxing after a fight.

Charlemagne remained in the throne room and marched over to the planning table, casting aside a massive sheaf of papers that had contained plans for Apophis, where they flew through the air, only to curl up and fold until they landed in neat piles against the wall.

One more World Boss

One more fight.

One final push.

And then, the universe would be open to them.

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