MTLNOVEL Chapter 707: One Too Many Times
Aliata ignored the fading away of two of her fellows and just concentrated on fighting, her movements and decisions growing riskier and riskier in an attempt to bring down Xaros, which led to her enduring one of his punches to the face in exchange for slashing open his ribcage, causing many of the skulls packed within to come flowing out, in this instant, she rapidly forced herself to recovering from the heavy blow.
The restless attempt to lunge forward as well, but with many skulls falling out and moving around, his balance was all messed up, allowing Aliata to get the initiative, kicked one of the skulls straight into Xaros's face as swing her bronze dagger, reaping his remaining left arm and to land a kick right into his knee, making the restless buckle.
Xaros swung the only arm he had left, nearly hitting the somewhat dazed living despite the horrendous angle he tried to strike from, but Aliata, managed to evade with an uncertain dodge and cut down the last arm, feeling blood flowing out from her nose as a sensation of weightlessness hit her, the repercussions of getting a direct hit were getting to her.
But it didn't bring her down just yet, raising her bronze dagger high above her head.
The restless cursed in his mind, the redhead truly was a terrible match-up for him, forcing him to fight with naught but his body when it definitely was far from ideal, he could only look toward Xarina, who was already close to finishing up another one of her powerful attacks, surely, forcing the living to use her second step a fourth time would be enough to at least ensure that she was out-of-combat for the reminder of the battle.
As long as that was done, Xaros didn't care if he was destroyed, glory and eternity were awaiting them at the end of it all, still, he attempted to get out of the way of that last strike, but to no avail.
The bronze dagger sunk into the top of his skull, its guard smashing against the bone, and with a brutal twist, Aliata ripped the blade right out, finishing the restless for good, right on time as the third sphere of condensed soul energy was launched toward her.
'I was too late' she clicked her tongue.
"Mourn!"
Activated her second step for the fourth time, it felt like someone grabbed her guts and pulled them in three different directions at once with all possible ounce of force they could muster, but it worked, and the sphere of pure destruction dispersed into harmless soul energy.
Aliata's knees felt like jelly caught in an earthquake, but she didn't allow herself to fall, and instead moved as quickly as was possible toward the giant bone-lotus, or bony spider lily, the last, truly powerful restless left within the city, although not quite a general, Xarina possessed absurd firepower and seemingly a bottomless reserve of soul energy to pull from, unlike Aliata who was exhausted from using her second step four times, this undead could probably manifest twenty or thirty more of those mass of energy without problem.
And it didn't seem like the big flower saw any problem with doing so…
'Alielil is fighting something unknown up there… But it had to be powerful to be holding her in place and causing such a sense of danger in me… Probably something I can't deal with my abilities' the redhead moved forward, the giant restless, largest of its kind most probably, noticed her approach and instead of doing the same thing as before, it allowed one rib to spread outward, whilst compressing another one of those dreadful attacks, that one rib manifested a smaller sort, an orb that exploded into a dozen of projectiles, all arching toward the living.
'...Shit' weaving in between these blasts, who were still larger than a person wasn't easy in her current state, more than once, she found herself within the blast radius and was thrown to the side, sent rolling amongst the debris and bloody remains of fellow warriors and bones of restless.
Still, she persevered to try and get close to the bone-lotus, however, the restless's size was so great, that actually judging the distance accurately wasn't as easy as it might appear, and ten steps only felt like one was being taken in the direction of the enemy.
The undead switched between multiple energy bullets and a singular one, which didn't help Aliata get close, however, despite all that and looked like she had crawled through shards of broken glass to get there, the elite got somewhat close to the immense restless.
'I took too long, it will definitely get to launch it before I can strike' indeed, somewhat close to this thing was still way out of arm's reach, and Aliata wasn't even certain that a small scratch or stab would be enough to disturb Xarina's energy flow as a whole and prevent it from being launched.
And even then, just disrupting it wasn't enough, she needed to defeat it for good lest she wanted the city and the people still fighting within it to be reduced to empty space.
Flinging her bronze dagger, holding it by the tip of its blade, Aliata breathed in and out heavily, pulling her arm back, feeling each and every muscle screaming out for mercy, begging to be laid to rest.
She closed her eyes and ignored the fact that another attack that would tear into pieces was most certainly already, or soon to be, coming her way, focusing to sense the soul energy of the restless before her, trying to discern where it was that its vulnerable spot was hiding, and it didn't take long, the humanoid portion of this colossal corpse flower was smacked right down the middle of the whole thing.
Without further hesitation, Aliata threw her bronze dagger right through the air into a wide arc, nearly knocking herself over from putting too much force for her weary body to handle, it flashed right through the air, spinning as it arched right toward its target.
Xarina, noticed something flying her way when it was already too late, not understanding what it was in time due to having never assumed that any of the livings would throw their precious soul weapon away from themselves, the bronze dagger, embedded itself right through her skull.
But the sphere being formed did not stop, for neither was it enough to destroy the until then, unharmed restless, but Aliata's state had rendered her dagger much less effective already, to the point that it no longer functioned against such a large target.
'Well, fuck it'
"Mourn!" for the fifth time, she activated it.
One too many times.
The blade twisted to form a mouth and whilst still stuck into the skull of Xarina, emitted its cry, causing the soul energy of the restless to escape her control and unexpectedly, finish splitting her skull in half.
"Heh… I didn't even know it dealt damage like that if it was stabbed through something…" Aliata crumbled flat to the ground, having expended too much energy, unconscious to witness the bone-flower falling apart and causing incredible destruction even after being defeated.
But it didn't matter, this was much less worse than the alternative of allowing the restless to freely fire those attacks.