[ Skill: Etherial Truth ]
Description: One of the skills exclusive to magic swordsmen, the Etherial Truth allows the user to peak into the nature of mana for a brief period of time. The skill will allow the user to transform his whole body into a mana-like substance for a brief moment, anything that the user touches in this state will be shown to the user in its most basic form and the user will be able to see the nature of it. Attacking any object in this state will allow the user to completely destroy any part of it. The drawback of the skill is the long concentration-time needed to start it and the fact that an enemy sensitive to mana could disrupt it.
The huge tail of the boss suddenly whips at Reign as the latter widens his eyes in shock. He didn’t expect that even after losing an arm the boss would immediately continue attacking him. He puts both of his swords in front of him as he channels as much mana as he can to his hands.
Bam!
The tail arrives and launches Reign in the air. The powerful attack wasn’t easy to block and Reign suffered the consequences of his previous attack. Both of his arms were injured and his left hand was fractured. The sword in his left hand was still there as his grip had not lessened even the slightest.
“Reign!” Shadow shouts as his eyes redden in fury. He immediately slashes at the open wound of the boss once again, delivering heavy damage to it, “Take this, you bastard!”
Shadow opens his palm as a small ball of darkness could be seen on it. With fury, he throws the ball in the wound before quickly retreating.
“Darkness Implosion.”
The dark ball suddenly bursts open as a small gravitational field was created around it. The surrounding area of it suddenly violently starts being pulled towards it, the flesh, blood, and the bones of the boss monster were not an exception. However, the radius of the field was only about half a meter, deadly enough for enemies that were the size of a human or a bit larger, but not enough to deal any lethal damage to the huge boss.
“Arrggh!: The boss cries out in pain as it puts his claw above the wound while a shockwave was spread around it. Everybody retreats as a huge amount of stones were suddenly springing up from the ground. The radius of the boss’s skill was a full 10 meters around it and Tank and Wolf were hit by some stones while fleeing, they weren’t heavily injured luckily.
“Reign,” Laura calls out as she gets near Reign. She immediately uses her ability to start healing him and his hands, her ability had improved greatly in the last month but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to heal such injuries quickly. She was using her ability with full power as a huge amount of her stored life force was quickly disappearing.
“Enough Laura, you won’t be able to fight if you continue with this.” Reign stands up as he pats her on the shoulder. His arms were better now and even the fracture on his left hand was healed as Laura had focused most of her healing there, there were still a lot of injuries on his body but he would be fine.
“But y-”
“My arm’s fine now, I can fight, that’s the most important thing now, save your mana for later, someone may get injured again.” Reign looks at her with a serious expression as she nods in acknowledgment.
She gets back as he gets ready to fire off her long-range attacks at the boss. Compared to the others she was still a bit less skillful and had fewer items so she usually stayed at the back as she used her ability to send out heavy long-range magic attacks. So far the tactic had worked well and her magic was able to deal heavy damage to their enemies, even the boss was damaged by it as her magic dealt not only physical damage, but also dealt a blow to the enemy life-force, and most beings in the universe had it, except for some weird undead creatures.
The boss was panting heavily now as it looked at Reign and the others with hatred. Its strong defense had been penetrated time and time again by these small creatures, the pain it was feeling now enraged it and made it use a lot of mana to activate such a large AoE attack. It was a mistake, the rocks didn’t manage to deal any significant damage to them and it only worked against the boss as it had drained a good chunk of its mana.
They all attack it again. Tank was leading the charge with his scythe as his shield was glowing brightly. With vigor, he jumps high in the air as he uses his shield to bash against the incoming claw of the boss.
Shield Rupture
The skill he had now used was one of his custom-made skills. After fighting together with Reign and Greenie so many times he grew interested in their Compact Punch and Shattering Punch so he talked about it with them. After seeing that Tank was so interested in their skills Reign and Greenie gave it their best effort to explain how they worked to him.
The end result of the explanation and hours of practice was the Shield Rupture. It was a skill that puts even more stress on the body compared to theirs, luckily Tank’s body was strong, especially so when considering his ability. By channeling mana through his body towards his arm he is able to cover the whole shield with it. The mana would continue to be channeled through the whole body and the shield, making a circuit of sorts that would be disrupted when the shield made contact with something.
The result was the mana suddenly being forced to the shield violently as it exploded forward in an explosive fashion. The bones, muscles, and organs would go through a lot of pressure during that and it was impossible for someone with a weak endurance and vitality to use it as there was a high chance the user would simply die from it. Luckily Tank could use his ability together with the skill, his copper body reinforced not only his skin but also his insides now. Tank was able to use the skill without much risk and its power was evident.
The claw of the boss was launched back from the collision as Tank was also sent flying back. He spewed out a bit of blood from his mouth as the impact from hitting the boss was a bit too much, but the boss fared no better. Its hand was slightly deformed as blood could be flowing from it, several of the claws were broken as well.
Before the boss could do anything Beast had launched his attack as well. Using his wind manipulation he was able to float in the air for a brief amount of time, using that time he launched a salvo of arrows in a circle around the boss. Before the boss was able to understand what he was doing he had already finished and went down on the ground where he pierced his final arrow.
Holding the arrow with his hand he started talking while channeling mana to it, the arrow together with the others suddenly started glowing a bright green light.
“Spirit of the wind I call thee,” Beast whispers as he lets go of the arrow before pointing at the boss.
“Vengeful wind of the world, cut him down.”
Right after Beast had finished his words the arrows exploded as a huge blade of wind was formed in the air. The blade slashed down on the boss as it cut deeply in its shoulder.
Laura on the other hand had drawn a pentagram on the ground using a knife she had on her waist. She cut her palm and let her blood drip down on the pentagram that suddenly started shinning a dark purple light.
A small vortex appears from the pentagram as a staff comes out. A flaming, purple-colored blade springs up from the staff as Laura holds it.
[ Demonic Scythe ]
She swings down the scythe with all her might as a spinning light goes forth towards the boss. Laura lets go of the scythe as she feels a pull from the small vortex, in moments the scythe had gone back to its base form of a staff and retreated back to the vortex.
The boss swung his body as its tail whipped at the light. It screams out in pain as the light was actually mana that was spinning rapidly like a saw, its tail was lacerated many times at multiple locations by it. After the attack had ended everyone could see big wounds on the tail as a pool of blood had already formed below it.
“It’s near its end, let’s finish this guys,” Reign says as he charges at the boss with his swords, the others follow him as they all had a smile. They were finally going to kill their first field boss.