MischievousMuffin
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Incremental Torture - B2, Chapter 7
🕑 Added 2024-06-14 12:20:00 +0000 UTCDespite being far stronger than the previous time she encountered Dazurmagon, Evelyn opted to start with the same strategy she had employed during their last clash.
Crippling the hyper boss’ movement by taking out its legs was her priority. And this time around she would be able to do it far quicker, or so she hoped.
Her speed attribute had been pushed into double digits, which made a big difference. Flashfreeze Flamecharge hadn’t altered much, so it had to have been the attribute which made her so much quicker. Her launch was marked by a scuffle on the sturdy arena floor. A weaker terrain may have cracked and cratered, but if not even the Worldshaker’s steps could leave a mark on this material, then how could Evelyn’s?
The hyper boss had yet to gain its bearings when her hammer smashed into its rocky ankle. That gave her a window of opportunity to deliver a second blow before having to retreat from the frantic stomp that followed when it took note of her attacks.
A pair of beady black eyes flickered to her position, still carrying that arrogant nonchalance they had held the first time the two had fought.
Why would a monster on that scale take her seriously, when her full powered strikes could only serve to chip at its flesh?
She grit her teeth and charged in, quashing her rage and focusing it to a better purpose. Ice cut into stone as her hammer blew away more and more of the beast’s leg. Its movements grew a little sloppier the more Evelyn struck at it.
As she readied herself to deal the final strike, which would sever foot from leg, there was a fluttering in her mana sense from above and she saw the hyper boss’ other leg rise up high, bending at the knee.
Here, rather than let the monster carry out whatever counter attack it had planned, she tapped into one of her new skills for the first time. Having grown so used to moulding Flashfreeze Flamecharge to suit whatever purpose she most desired, it felt unusual to have the skill guide her mana entirely. However, she didn’t want to risk an error at a crucial moment.
Perhaps due to the difference in power between her and the gigantic lava elemental, it drained a quarter of her mana reserves to activate Signal Failure.
The cost was worth it, every mote. The hyper boss froze mid-movement, right as it was about to stomp down on the ground and trigger an earthquake. That gave her the time she needed to complete the final swing of her warhammer and smash through the final bits of stone that held its left leg together.
It resumed the motion a second later, but now lacking two feet it was disjointed and failed to cause the rumbling boom it had intended. Evelyn swayed on her feet but remained upright and in the centre of the action.
Dazurmagon began to shudder and tip over, now lacking a pivotal part of its body. However, she knew from experience it had the acrobatic skill to stay standing on a single foot.
Not wanting to give it a chance to recover and have a stable position from which to strike back at her, Evelyn turned from the destroyed ankle and charged at the other, undamaged limb.
Here, she didn’t even need to deal much lasting damage. With one of its feet already destroyed, a single, well placed blow would be enough to topple the hyper boss. Or so she hoped.
If she failed to bring it to its knees here, then the monumental task of climbing its 50 metre body to reach the vulnerable core would lie ahead of her. She had managed it, during the last battle, but at great cost. And she hoped to avoid such self destructive gambits this time around.
Hot air whistled through her pursed lips as she let out a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding. Her warhammer cracked the surface of Dazurmagon’s right ankle and there was a mighty groan as its self balancing manoeuvres were interrupted.
A dark shadow fell over her, and a horrible realisation dawned. In all her rush to bring the monster down, she forgot that it needed somewhere to land.
Evelyn was confident in her durability, but the full weight of the hyper boss landing on her head would still deal far more damage than she was comfortable suffering at that moment.
Right as she started to reach for her mana, an alternative strategy wormed its way to the forefront of her mind. It was risky - but what great plans weren’t? With just seconds before the mass of stone and magma crushed her, she had to make a snap decision.
While her general plan had been to avoid damage as much as possible while whittling down the boss to a more defeatable state, she couldn’t help but think how poorly that had gone the last time. Besides, bold and brash action was far more her style than a slow and steady war of attrition. Her next step decided, she ran her eyes up the length of Dazurmagon’s back, looking for the rough location of her target.
It was difficult to judge, for two reasons. The first was that while she knew the position the hyper boss’ core had been the last time they fought, there was no guarantee it would be there again this time.
The second reason being that the monster’s colossal body was blocking out most of the light and trying to get her bearings using just the flickering flames emitted from its magmatic flesh was rather a struggle.
Her hammer trailed along the icy ground behind her as flames licked from her pores. With a final calming breath, Evelyn unleashed her gathered mana.
An echoing boom rang out as the huge stone giant slammed into the floor of the arena.
Clouds of dust and shards of stone billowed out in all directions and a blastwave of air rippled outwards, buffeting the pillars and petering out as it met the mountain range beyond.
For a moment after the impact, there was a heavy silence that hung in the air.
Then a crack.
It started with just one, but more cracks followed and soon the Worldshaker’s body was broken and battered. A final explosion, like a shattering chandelier, rang out as the magma giant’s corpse blew in every direction.
Evelyn lay there, breathless and burnt black. Above her hung the glowing red core of Dazurmagon the Worldshaker.
And that wasn’t all. She had a choice to make, with no time to consider the consequences or the benefits of each option. In her vision, there floated two messages from the tower.
Your class has advanced!
Unyielding Warrior Lv.14 > Lv.15
Congratulations challenger, you have met the requirements for the first Ascension! Navigate to the Ascension menu to initiate the process.
She suspected it was a process that would take some time. No, she knew it would not be a simple thing.
Just the name alone - Ascension - implied a shedding of the old self and rising to become something greater. Rising above.
However, her skills were already faltering. Her wounds suffered when her hammer had met with the monster’s back and she had been showered in its superhot blood and sprayed with stone were healing, but slower than before.
Even with Celestial Resonance, would she be able to take on that improved form of the hyper boss that she had only glimpsed at the previous battle, before it moved to take her life and forced her to escape?
Perhaps she could. With almost fifty million essence at hand, she could burn through most of it and give herself a massive multiplier to her attributes, one that might give her a fighting chance in hand to hand combat with the most powerful foe she had ever encountered. However, there was still too much uncertainty in that plan.
Another failure wouldn’t be catastrophic, from a practical point of view. Mentally, though? Evelyn wasn’t sure she could deal with the guilt and self hatred that would arise from such a result.
So, given that she had a brief respite from combat while the hyper boss was advancing to its second form, the lava already dripping from the floating core to reform itself in a new image, Evelyn opened the Ascension menu, which looked a little different from the last time she had checked it.
~~ * Ascension * ~~
Ascend beyond the limits of your current form and be reborn anew
Requirements for 1st Ascension have been met, initiate Ascension?
Y/N
Her finger hovered for a moment, hesitating even though she had already committed herself, before she pressed ‘Y’.
A feeling of elation and utter relaxation washed over her and Evelyn felt her mind being pulled away from the arena, away from the 16th Floor.
That was terrifying.
She had a small window during which to act, and if the hyper boss happened to finish healing itself before her ascension was successful, then it would have free reign to destroy her and she wouldn’t even have the chance to escape.
However, she had known all of that before making this decision. It was one thing to know a plan was risky though, and a different beast entirely to experience the sheer terror that came with embracing those dangers.
After a while, the feeling of floating through space ended and Evelyn found herself sitting on a chair in a pure white room.
When she tried to get a look at the chair, she found it always remained just out of view. After completing a full three-hundred-sixty degree rotation of her head and discovering she was still sat facing forwards, she gave up on trying to figure it out.
Standing up also didn’t work - her legs refused to budge.
A black slit appeared in front of her, and a person stepped out from it. How that worked, given that the slit appeared to be two dimensional, Evelyn didn’t know. The slit closed behind the person, who took a seat in the empty air, crossing one leg over the other.
Person was a generous description of the entity facing her. It was person shaped, sure. But it wasn’t really a person, at least by the metrics she would use to describe one. It was a mass of pure white. Somehow though, it didn’t blend in with the pure white room around them. It had an overwhelming presence that layered itself onto reality and forced her to take note of it, regardless of complications like colour.
“Hello Eve,” it said. It spoke in a flat, emotionless voice. She could have said it was reminiscent of popular artificial intelligences from sci-fi movies and games, but that wasn’t quite accurate. That seemed to be a theme here.
“Did I do something wrong? With the ascension?” she asked.
“Not at all, this is how it happens for anything that attempts ascension. You have no reason to fear me, I am just a representation of the tower’s will. At this point-” the white thing never got to finish its sentence, because Evelyn pulled on every ounce of willpower she had and stood from the chair, before landing a swift punch to the entity’s head, or what approximated one.
The outcome was far from satisfying, however.
Her fist made contact with the white mass and stopped in place. There was no feedback from the blow. She blinked and found herself back in the chair, staring at the tower.
“Well, at least I tried. One day I’ll be able to do that for real,” she muttered.
“That was rather rude of you. I am here to help, Eve.”
“Somehow I find that difficult to believe. Even knowing that you were created to forge some kind of super warrior to save the multiverse, I think you take too much pleasure in torturing the challengers. There’s also the possibility that you fabricated that whole origin story just to twist my view of the tower. Look at it more favourably.”
“I do not feel emotions. My purpose is to test those who enter my realm in order to stimulate their growth. To discover, or create a ‘super warrior’ as you put it.”
“Whatever. I don’t think I have much time left out there, can we just get this Ascension over with,” she said, tapping on her knee.
“Do not worry about your physical body. Time outside is frozen while you are engaged in the process of Ascension. If you have finished letting out your emotions, I will begin the explanation.”
“Go for it. I’m ready.”
