Chapter 378

Evergreen threw herself backward and to the right, dragging a sheet of ice around the ground with her as she moved. Her eyes didn’t leave Graff for an instant as her mind went through every instant of the recovered footage from the Seattle Dungeon containment building and what the Committee knew from his stay in prison. He has complete mastery over his body’s composition and can turn himself into varying states of carbon. He can also manipulate the carbon atoms in anything he touches. Her eyes narrowed as he shot past her position, siding to a stop and pivoting with an eye twitch.

He telegraphs his attacks a bit, he likes making himself light to launch and then rapidly increases his weight before impact, she thought.

He raised an eyebrow. “Pregame research?”

She held out a hand. “Of course. Mister top ten.”

The rippling ray of aurora shot from her palm as she fell back more, keeping her distance from his very lethal hands while he lunged again. He kicked off the ground and into the air, the beam grazing his shin as she created a column of ice beneath her feet that shot out like a piston, flinging her backward and away from him again. He landed on the column with enough force to shatter it, and whipped his head up towards her. The wind whipped past her ear as she was carried backwards, firing off three more shots before landing and rushing to the right. Why is he here, though? He hates socializing, he showed himself to me on purpose.

Graff, for his part, stood completely still in the center of the space, his clothes and skin darkening as the blasts of aurora splashed against him. He turned his head slowly with her movement, blue eyes narrowing into slits. Evergreen danced. She stepped and spun whipping her arm around and drawing a line of snow across the ground that froze into a cluster of ice. It streaked towards him and collided, she kept moving, dropping and ripping her hands up, ice forming at his feet and rising to encase him. She hopped back and clapped her hands together with a grunt and clenched her fist. Condense!

With a heavy creak of sound that filled the air ice drew together and grew thicker, denser around his body as she elevated him into a frozen cylinder. She slid back and caught her breath. He didn’t even try to escape. Her lips pressed together in a line and she turned her attention to the dark form inside the icy cylinder. His heart’s still beating. She thought, sensing the low thump of each movement of his pulse. Her hands slowly rose, ready for the next stage.

Then she felt it, the ice of the prison she’d crafted starting to creak. She grit her teeth and snapped her hands out to her sides before bringing them together with a clap, clenching her fingers together. The ground shook, the air groaned and a deep chill washed over the few structures and plantlife around her. Splashes of cold. She ground her teeth together as the deep base creak of two enormous masses of ice forming thrummed through the air. Two microglaciers rose like the dead from the ground and slammed into the prison from either side. She shifted her grip and the dense ultra-hard ice collided with the prison, melding around it like a second shell.

“...Glacial Tomb.” She hissed, mist pouring from her lips. She glanced down at her fingers, the ice crystals had spread up her hands. She weaved her hands together in a quick motion and drew the chill out of her body, tossing it aside and flexed her fingers before looking back up at him. The glacier didn’t move and she let out a short sharp breath. That can’t be everything. What’s he waiting for? 

CRRRKKKKK

The glacier cracked.

There it is, she thought and slid back to gain more distance as fresh aurora danced around her fingertips. 

BOOOOM!

The glacier collapsed into boulders of ice that fell to the ground around the sudden blur of movement that was Graff. He streaked towards her in an instant, an off-gray bullet of pure momentum. She threw up a wall of ice to slow his advance and moved, darting to the right but he moved to intercept in an instant, his leg coming up towards her abdomen. The impact sent a shock through her ribs, air forced out of her lungs as she was thrown back. She hit the ground at a backpedal, ice forming beneath her feet in a curving ramp that used the momentum to send her sliding away and around him. Her hair fluttered around her face as she drew her hand up and the ramp rose, curving around the area. Graff turned and looked up just as she hurled herself off the top of the ramp and rained one ray of aurora after another on his head.

He can make his body almost completely inorganic, this is the worst possible match-up! She cursed. Reinforcements have to come. I just need to-

Shhht

Something cut her cheek and she blinked. Graff had raised his hand and pointed it at her. Something glimmered in the air around his arm and shot out. She spun mid air with a blast of ice from her palm to create rotation, the ice shattered as a diamond bullet shot through it. Ranged attacks? Since when? She gasped as she fell towards the ground and landed. She righted herself and he was on her again, fist raised. Her eyes widened. Damn it! She pivoted and… tripped on her own ice. She felt time slow for just a heartbeat as confusion crackled across her brain. I tripped? She hit her back and rolled out of the way hopping back to her feet as his open palm passed through the spot she’d just been standing in.

He turned slowly to face her, his eyebrow raised. “Points for style, I guess.”

Her eye twitched, and she returned to her stance. “Dunno if I want to hear that from the worlds deadliest recluse," she shot back.

His smile could cut glass. “Funny.” He growled and raised his hand, more diamonds forming. “Let’s get back to it, hero.” He snarled as the ground shook. They both turned and the sky began to glow as the dungeon went through another change.

Her eyes widened. “...oh no.”

—

There was so much momentum. She had long since lost count on what step she was on in this march. Her internal energy was a churning roar inside of her body, she imagined it would have been painful. Instead it felt exhilarating, right, the pressure and strain she’d experienced during her confrontation with Kingshark a shameful display of what she should have been capable of. Her boots tapped loudly against the ground, gold flames left on the ground in her wake. She pivoted and three gilded streaks rendered one of the mutated monsters down into nothing. She snapped a kick and the next attacker was sent hurtling back into the wall behind him, pulverized. She glanced up to the sky and tilted her head to listen before changing direction. That way. 

The ground was shaking even worse, now. An earthquake that ground its way through the entire dungeon like an angry roar. She set her jaw and hopped over an attacking monster, pushing through to another hallway cutting through yet another beast as the change finally took hold. The black walls around her grew higher, the geometric obsidian-like material becoming even smoother, some of the shapes sliding further into the wall while the hallways grew wider. Behind her, the monsters howled in a mournful chorus of agony as their bodies were twisted into something new in real time. The sound was enough to send bile to her throat. She shuddered and focused on moving forward. Rare-tier. She cursed, her feet barely touching the ground as each step took her further and further.

The next open room came with a Rare. The gangly spike-armed monsters had changed into multiple types. One was a tall, giraffe sized abomination with long segmented rods of obsidian for limbs that lumbered over the others like a grotesque four-legged daddy-long-legs. The ones beneath it had regained partial use of their limbs, the flesh overtaking some of the spikes as joints were restored to their forearms. Their twisted forms more humanoid, lamprey heads that curved forward with odd slits at the side that may have been vestigial eyes. Segmented plates of that black stone covered their chests in a patchwork of armor.

She narrowed her eyes and shot forward without a second thought, her sword already ignited when it carved through the first one. She felt a small amount of resistance to her horizontal slash but that was all their was. She was already pivoting to the next, bringing her weapon down in a vertical arc. She turned next to the big one and with a small grunt of effort sent a crescent-shaped cascade of inner energy and flame up towards it. The arc crashed into it and consumed it in a brief conflagration that turned it to ash. She didn’t wait long enough to watch the show. Where is he? He can’t have gotten far! She thought as she rounded another corner.

A shudder in the air drew her attention as she pushed into the next hallway. Alphonse’s cry overhead directed her and she looked for a side passage on the left as she barreled down the path. There! She slid and changed direction, cutting through another humanoid as Otis came into view at the other end of the short passage. His back was to the wall and his hand was raised over his head. She could feel mana being drawn towards his fingers like a torrent, the center of the eye of a storm. Her eyes widened. He’s not stopping at rare, that psychopath! She snarled and stormed towards him. He looked at her with a smile and tilted his chin up, grinning. “Having-”

“Third March!” she bellowed, “Storm the Bastion!”

His eyes widened as she practically levitated off the ground in her pursuit. His hand dropping and frantically moving in the air in the split second between her leaving the ground and the impact. The first crash came with enough force to knock him off his feet, her sword colliding with his in a flare of superheated golden light. A heartbeat. Then he was soaring back through the wall he had stood in front of with a cough, the wall vanishing behind him as she shot forward into the adjacent hallway. She was behind him, a roar in her throat as she gripped her sword with two hands and swung again. He whirled with a snarl and threw up a desperate mid-air block that sent him careening down the new path. She took another step and raised her weapon over her head before bringing it down in a combination. “SIEGE BLOW!”

–

Otis slid across the ground, bouncing once as his body rolled like a ragdoll. He collided with the wall and scrambled to his feet as the entire hallway turned into a golden glow. He looked up, pulse pounding in his ears. A wave of concentrated might falling down towards him in a furious crescent of destruction. What the hell?! He hissed and gripped his golden blade with both hands, It’s not fair! Why is she winning? I should already have enough fame to fight evenly with any mythic, but she’s- He snarled the thought away, roaring as he swung to cut through the incoming cataclysm. The walls around him exploded, shrapnel flying he spun into a whirlwind to knock them away as the section of halls was turned into a brand new open area by the insane woman’s unchecked wrath.

She was already moving again. Her orange eyes were on fire, molten metal burning in her skull as she moved in for the next clash. She’s so fast! He threw himself to the right and swung at her side only for a clang of metal to greet him. He pushed down against her, pupils shrinking into points. It was unfair, it was wrong, he was the man, the myth, the legend. Not her, not anyone else! Yet she was overwhelming him completely. He bore his teeth, stained pink from blood as he pushed down harder than he’d ever pushed before. “CRUSADEEERR!”

She gripped her weapon with both hands pushing back with a wordless roar of her own. The grip on her blade shifted just once and she pushed, he felt his grip slacken and panic, true panic, finally flashed through him. No! He kicked off the ground with all his might and darted backwards towards a pack of the damn monstrosities he’d created. He turned with a snarl and kicked, the concussive blast turning them into pulp as he landed, his sword clattering to the ground between them. He looked down at it, then up at her, she was still walking. She never stops moving, damn that power of hers!

He wiped his lip and called up his cheat menu as her eyes narrowed with fury. He swapped out a cheat as fast as he could as she lunged, weapon raised to spear his skull. He brought his hand up to his chest and gripped it before activating pause. The world around him froze. He opened his eyes and saw the tip of her weapon trembling an inch in front of his eye. He stumbled back, a gasp tearing from his throat. “Bitch!” he snarled and darted past her slowly moving form. She isn’t even fully paused, how goddamn fast is she?! He cursed as he scrambled for his weapon, the outrageous expenditure of mana he needed to use pause searing through his very being, his heart trembling with each restrained second.

He snatched his weapon up and turned, grinning. Then his smile faltered. It was slow, painstakingly slow, but her body had already begun to turn. No! He snapped and kicked off the ground. Die you cockroach! He swung, breaking his concentration on pause as motion returned to the world. His weapon bit into flesh as he slid past her in an arc of momentum. She gasped and whirled her weapon meeting open air as he hit the ground and burst into motion again. I… missed? After pausing her? He kept running. I missed. I missed. I missed. How did I miss?

He kept running as the dungeon shuddered and groaned around them.

How did I miss? I don’t understand.

–

Crusader staggered, hot pain burning on her back as she tumbled forward, her arms going numb. Every ounce of willpower kept her feet moving and her fingers tight around the handle of her weapon as she tried to wrap her mind around what had happened. Did he suddenly get faster? No. There was just no movement at all, he was gone. A teleportation? She shook her head. No. He didn’t have time to pick up his weapon after a teleportation. 

Her eyes narrowed and she looked up at where his form retreated around a corner, her teeth bared and gold flame already burning across the wound on her back. Around her, the dungeon groaned. Whatever he’d done, it’d pushed a monstrous amount of used mana into the air. 

The possibility hit her like a truck. Did he stop time? 

She shook off the shock and moved. I’ll figure it out when I find him next. You aren’t getting away from me, Otis.