~Chapter 178~ Part 2
The battle in the Purple Zone came to an abrupt… not a 'halt', per se, but more of a strange lull in the wake of the arch-mage's scream. The noise of combat quieted as everyone turned to stare at the center of the square. Surrounded by Josh and Elly on one side, Angie/Deus and Ammy on the other, Penny bringing up the rear, and Snowy hovering over the scene while surrounded by half a dozen floating ice spears, the woman in the middle looked almost pitiful.
'Almost' being the operating word here. Her burned and frayed robes were little more than tattered rags hanging around her waist, and the dark pants and tank top she had under them were also torn and stained. Her long black hair lost much of its lustre; grey was slowly seeping back into it at a rate visible to the naked eye, and dark blood was trickling out of every orifice on her head. Yet, despite all that, and how she had to lean on her staff for support, her eyes were not only clear but filled with endless venom.
If looks could kill, everyone within a city block would've been dead by now.
"We've got her! Press the advantage!" Josh pointed his black sword at her as he exclaimed. His expression was fierce, but also relieved, and despite being thrown around quite a bit and breaking most of the wards of his Magiformer already, he looked as vigorous as ever, if a bit worse for wear.
The same couldn't be said for the rest. Penny was enthusiastic, as usual, and since she joined the fray late, she didn't accumulate much damage yet, but the others were a bit more hesitant about attacking her just yet. Meanwhile, Marzanna's focus remained entirely on Angie, her eyes filled with the kind of visceral hatred one would only show to people who personally kicked their dog.
"You cursed fiend!" she screamed from the top of her lungs, making her seem more deranged than anything. "How dare you cast your dirty magic on me!? Unforgivable!"
Her howl broke the lull in the action like a stone thrown into the reflection in a lake, and everything started happening all at once.
First, before Marzanna could rush our friendly neighbourhood Celestial messiah, her path was blocked by a rain of giant icicles courtesy of Snowy.
"Protect the Lord!" one of the muscle-mages bellowed in response, turning his back on whoever he was fighting just a moment ago, and he thrust a fist into the air. It might've been a signal, because the rest of the still battle-ready Ottawan Magi mirrored the gesture. "For the arch-mage! For the Assembly!"
"The leeches are distracted! Secure His Grace!" the Celestial in charge shouted from another direction. "Forget about the rest! For the glory of Elysium!"
"Grrruoooohhh!" a golem also roared, because why wouldn't golems do that, am I right?
It was an outright cacophony, but fortunately Josh was at least nominally on top of the situation, and he began handing out orders like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Elly! Don't let those golems get any closer!"
"Got it!"
My draconic girlfriend rose into the air and added yet another ear-piercing note to the ambient background noise by releasing a crimson blast from her mouth, staggering the closest incoming golem. That was a pretty good hustle, but Josh didn't share my sentiment, and even as he was making his way over to Angie's side, he turned back to yell, "Don't hold back anything! This is the endgame!"
I couldn't see Elly's expression from here, but I could certainly hear her reaction, because she immediately let out a deep roar that made the whole Purple Zone tremble. Her features also changed as she further tapped into her dragon bloodline; her horns got a bit pointier, her tail a bit longer, and her red scales crept up to her cheeks.
That was followed by another breath attack, and this time the crimson ray not only abruptly grew in size, but also shifted into a brilliant yellow hue. The air distorted around the beam, bending light and creating flashes in every colour of the rainbow, and as fascinating as it looked, nobody had the time to marvel at the sight, as the moment the attack landed, it effectively erased the previous golem from the waist up and carved a trench as wide as a car into the ground behind it.
"It's Dragonfire!" one of the non-muscle-Magi cried out in alarm and waved his staff over his head. "Don't try to stop it, it's futile! Dodge, or take cover!"
He followed his own advice and rushed off the square to take shelter. Of course, Elly couldn't fire those off in quick succession; True Dragonfire was hell on her throat, and she needed to catch her breath after each use. We knew that, but they didn't, so her display was enough to put a pause on the advance on that front.
"I'll take care of this side!" Penny proposed at once and, true to her words, she suddenly accelerated and threw herself against the second ground of magi and golems attacking from the direction of the wide pedestrian street leading into the square.
"Like, where do you think you're going?!"
Though again, considering Sahi and Pascal were right behind them, maybe they weren't as much 'attacking' as 'regrouping', or maybe even 'escaping', but I digress. Meanwhile, Josh observed the battlefield and called out to Snowy.
"Lili! Keep those Celestials off our backs!"
My Abyssal sister was still busy keeping Marzanna occupied, but after letting another salvo of icy projectiles loose, she shouted back, "But what about her?"
"I'll hold her down!" Josh responded with a confident look, only to falter when he noticed the glance Angie was giving him, and he amended, "We'll hold her down, I mean!"
This time, I was sure it was Angie in control, not just because of her eye colour, but also because she was constantly humming. I knew for a fact that she was just straight up superior to Deus when it came to recovery magic, so it made sense that she would be in the driving seat when one of those spells was needed.
"Can you keep… erm…" He gestured at the arch-mage, currently in the process of digging herself out of under a mountain of icicles while screaming bloody murder, her hair back to its original faded grey at this point. "That. Can you keep it up?"
"Healing arias weren't designed to be used at these ranges, but… I'll do my best!" she declared with a firm nod and started straight up singing in a solemn, resonant voice. Of course, it was the same kind of faux-Latin as the Magi's chants, so I couldn't understand the lyrics. It still sounded nice.
In the meantime, Josh turned to Ammy and told her, "Please get that spell ready ASAP."
"We're working on it."
The class rep's grumbles were underscored by the flashing of the eye-symbol on her forehead, but by this point, Marzanna had finished breaking out of the forest of ice spears Snowy threw at her and picked up her staff, ready to take a swing at Josh and company again. The guy didn't give her the opportunity, and after hastily popping a blood-pill into his mouth, he rushed forth to meet her halfway.
"Out of my way, cur!"
"I refuse!" Josh shouted back. He met the incoming staff with his shield, and this time, he didn't get blown away or even falter. "I won't let you take another step towards them!"
"Abominable Celestial scum!" the arch-mage roared, half-delirious from the anger and the pain of her physical enhancements tearing at her.
Oh, this might actually be a good spot to explain what's going on with her, huh?
Simply put, Angie was healing her. Based on what I understood, both the Restoration School of magic and the Celestials' healing songs were operating on Astral Bodies. For Marzanna, my hunch was that she used the same kind of magic that knocked out my physical body when I was in Ottawa, a spell that temporarily altered the Astral Body, forcing the corporeal one to change correspondingly.
In her case, she modded herself to be stronger and more resilient, so she could stack more and more physical enhancements without her body either blowing up or suffering from mana burns. In contrast, Angie's healing magic worked by 'rewinding' damage and syncing up both the real and the metaphysical body to make the changes permanent. By using that on Marzanna, she was constantly 'healing' the modifications she made on her own Astral Body, which reverted the changes to her physical body, and without those, she couldn't endure the strain of her own buffs, and they were tearing her apart.
Of course, this kind of thing wouldn't have worked without having an accomplished Celestial healer doing the casting, backed by Deus's raw power, but that's just how 'clever solutions against threshold antagonists' usually worked. At least we weren't doing the old 'Haha! I'm invincible to everything but the carburettor of a 1967 Chavrolet Rooibok!' followed by someone going 'Oh, what a coincidence! My weapon just happens to be forged from the carburettor of a 1967 Chavrolet Rooibok I inherited from my father, the last descendant of the noble and ancient line of 1967 Chavolet Rooibok carburettor-forgers!'
…
Yes, I know that sounded farcical, but I swear to god, I've seen something similar back when I was doing my trope research. Of course, it didn't have anything to do with vintage cars, but otherwise it was exactly like that.
Anyhow, where were we? Right, Marzanna's weakness. She not only got hit hard by the backlash of her own physical buffs, but since Angie continued to 'heal' her, she now had to focus on counteracting her. That didn't weaken her much, but on the flip side, she no longer had the mental leeway to fight and cast her crowd control spells at the same time, which resulted in a straight-up brawl between her and Josh with sparks flying and the ground breaking and all kinds of shockwaves everywhere.
"Foolish child! Your naïve idealism has no place in this world!"
"It's not idealism, it's the truth! You just have to open your eyes!"
… Well, okay, maybe none of those epic clashes were happening right now, but I was talking in general. In fact, at this moment Josh and Marzanna were doing another time-honoured tradition of the battle shounen genre, the clashing of ideals mid-fight.
It was something different from just run-of-the-mill combat banter, and Josh was demonstrating how it worked in practice.
"Look how much we accomplished by working together!"
"All I'm seeing is a vile group of schemers, betrayers, and backstabbers! Nothing more, nothing less, and certainly nothing new!"
The two of them lunged at each other, and their weapons clashed a couple of times. Josh's sword shaved a few splinters off the arch-mage's staff, but at the same time she pushed him back, and after just a few short exchanges, they both staggered back, readied their arms… and continued with their conversation like they never stopped.
"I'm telling you that you're blinded by your hatred! I don't know what kind of grudge you have against Celestials, and I'm not gonna tell you to get over it, but you have to at least try to understand! You can't live in the past!"
"What do you know about the past, Celestial scum?"
"Nothing! That's the point! I don't know why you're doing this, and I don't care! I don't wanna understand your past, I want you to understand our present!"
"Bah! Do you expect me to listen to some poisonous sermon about putting old grudges aside and working together for a better tomorrow?"
"Yes! If you would just listen, we could end this right here, and…"
… and so on and so forth. A minute of arguing, followed by a minute of fighting, rinse, lather, and repeat. It was a trope, and I'd seen Josh engage in it in the past, but this was the first time I stayed around long enough to listen to the particulars, and… well, let's just say that my inner cynic was cringing like he just bit into the world's sourest lemon, and leave it at that.
While they kept that up, I could see Elly and Snowy up in the air tag-teaming, Mike coming out of hiding to brainstorm with Ammy, while Angie kept singing her song with bloodshot eyes, as if afraid that if she took her eyes off Marzanna for a second, she would turn the tables. Of course, it never came to that, because after their latest clash sent Josh flying, he cast aside his shield and grabbed his sword with both hands.
"I was a fool for even attempting to reason with you, cur!" Marzanna sneered, and for once, Josh nodded along.
"Maybe. Maybe we weren't gonna come to a peaceful resolution." As he spoke, his whole body got enveloped in a pale golden aura streaked with red sparks, like tiny lightning bolts, and he lowered his sword, the tip pointing at the ground. "At the end of the day, you and your stubborn old hatred stand between us and rescuing our friend. If you're unwilling to step aside and accept your fault… then you leave me with no other choice!"
Oh, oh! Josh used the F-word!
No, not that F-word. The other one. The friend-word! It's also a trope (more a cliché, really), but as soon as he brought that up, his power surged, his black blade got enveloped in a sheath of crackling red energy, and even the debris around his feet began to rise up and levitate in the air, probably for dramatic effect.
Whether he received a sudden power-up because he invoked the power of friendship or if he brought it up to mentally steel himself before giving his all was an academic question we didn't have the time to dissect at the moment, because he immediately rushed towards the arch-mage. He was so fast it would've been hard to follow with the naked eye if not for the straight line of neon-bright streak he was drawing behind him, a mixture of vermillion and gold painted on the canvas of the air itself.
Marzanna stood her ground and tried to do something in return. Maybe a spell of a ward of some kind, but before she could finish casting, she reeled back when Angie raised her song to a crescendo, breaking her concentration and outright staggering her as blood seeped from her nose and mouth once again. Her next response was to retreat, but she was immediately cut off by a sudden rain of ice spears behind her position, forming a criss-crossing pattern that barred her path.
Out of options, she had no choice but to raise her staff with a roar. By then, Josh was already upon her, and he swung his sword upwards with a battle-cry of his own.
There was a high-pitched sound, like glass cracking, and then the whole Purple Zone was tinted red once more as an enormous pillar of crimson light rose to the sky, as if trying to pierce the heavens or something equally epic. I was more curious about how an upwards sword-swing created a vertical beam five meters in diameter, but the effect ended before I could take a closer look, leaving Josh and Marzanna in the middle.
Once again, the battlefield fell silent as everyone stared at the crater in the center, and after a suitably dramatic beat, the arch-mage's staff cleanly broke in half and disintegrated in front of everyone's eyes. Then, as soon as it completely disappeared in the wind, the blood-soaked woman fell to one knee, holding her face. Despite the pyrotechnics, the only injury Josh's final strike inflicted on her was a long, sharp wound running from her right cheek and across the bridge of her nose and forehead, just barely reaching past her right eyebrow.
"You… can consider that my last mercy," Josh stated, trying to sound cool, but it was obvious that whatever that last attack was, it took a lot out of him, and he was wobbly on his feet.
"Josh, no!" Angie cried out in a hoarse voice and immediately shifted her healing song to him. Which was, in retrospect, a bit of a tactical blunder.
"How dare y—?!"
Or rather, it would've been under other circumstances. Burning with rage, anger, and so on, Marzanna rose to her feet and reached out towards the guy's throat, her fingers like the claws of a predatory bird ready to rip and tear, but before she could reach him, her whole body froze up mid-motion. It was so sudden and unexpected that it not only took Josh a second to reel back, but even she needed a second to absorb the impact of coming to a forced standstill like that, and it caused her to cough up another mouthful of blood.
"Statement: Deployment successful," a new voice broke the stunned silence, and everyone turned to look at the semi-transparent woman standing next to the class rep.
"I barely made it in time…" Ammy had rivers of sweat running down her forehead and looked like she could keel over at any second, but luckily Mike was there to prop her up. After taking a few deep breaths, she pointed at the arch-mage and declared, "Take that! My first original spell!"
"Correction: The mana-weave is technically a variant of—"
"I said, it's my first original spell!" Ammy insisted, and the hologram of Grimmy graciously bowed out and fell silent. Feeling triumphant, she pointed at Marzanna again. "It's a unique and never-before-seen curse that reverses the effects of any and all physical enhancements! A spell that only the Conduit of the Grimoire could invent and cast like this! You won't even be able to move an inch until I undo it! Haha!"
…
I couldn't help but feel that becoming the Coinduit had a bad influence on the class rep's character. I would probably have to sit down with her and have a talk about it once I got out of this sticky Abyss situation, wouldn't I?
That was for later, though. For now, I focused on the arch-mage, and after but a few seconds, she completely paled and, unable to maintain her magic anymore, she collapsed onto the ground. Much to everyone's surprise and a certain class rep's embarrassment.
"M-My spell only works while someone has physical enhancements, okay? They must've come undone when she lost consciousness, so—"
She didn't have the time to finish her explanation, because as soon as the sight of Marzanna falling over sank in with them, the Magi in the Purple Zone went into a veritable frenzy and would've bull-rushed everyone… if not for the sudden and inexplicable opening of a large, circular portal at the edge of square.
"Are you serious with me right now?" Josh muttered, probably in response to something Judy said to him through the communicators. "They show up now, after we've already done all the heavy lifting? Fricking hell!"
As for the aforementioned 'they', emerging from the gateway…
"Kihihi! Fear not, for Doctor Robatto is here!"
…
Oh, what kind of fresh hell was this?
From the portal emerged Fred, wearing a full-body mech suit that inexplicably left his face exposed, followed by Galatea in the purple full-body catsuit I haven't seen her wearing since I hired the two of them. However, this would've still been in the realm of 'normal', by my standards. However, when they were followed by hundreds, and I mean, hundreds of the newest iteration of those dumb Sprocket robots Fred threw at the gang last year, I was ready to lose my mind. When those were flanked by not one, not two, but seven Biomechanical Gigants! And not the ones used in construction, but the type armed to the teeth!
Where did those come from? When did he make them? Where? How? Why didn't I notice?
"Deep breaths, Leo. Deep breaths…" I muttered under my breath as I watched the situation get exponentially more chaotic with this small army entering the Purple Zone.
There was no need to be upset. I'll have plenty of time to be upset later. For now, I still had to sit down with Judy, metaphorically speaking, and calmly and concisely explain the situation to her. If I had to postpone that because I was getting an aneurysm from sheer, unmitigated sentai-induced vexation, she might just murder me for real…