Chapter 94: Icon of Mana
Coop targeted the Prime Construct’s remaining weak points, desperate to prevent the Siege Boss from fully charging its ultimate attack. The purple star that continued to expand above Ghost Reef seemed like it would go supernova if the boss wasn’t interrupted. The boss made no effort to continue engaging with Coop, kneeling while concentrating all of its energy on growing the black bead into some kind of mana bomb. Without its counter attacks forcing Coop into wide repositionings, thanks to its bulk, it stood no chance against an onslaught from the Champion.
He threw his spear like a missile, destroying the right shoulder weak point with an explosion of red mana, but the boss didn’t react, absorbing the damage with suicidal determination. Coop quickly destroyed the left shoulder weak point for the third time, with another direct hit, but the boss still didn’t react. Coop became a turret, disabling the remaining good elbow, and the boss just continued facing the growing orb in the sky with both arms limp at its sides as if it had already lost its life, transformed into an enormous mannequin with a red haze of mana leaking into the air around it.
Coop disabled the rest of the weak points on the hips and knees and the boss finally tipped backwards until it was falling toward the beach that it came from, picking up speed like a felled tree as gravity inevitably dragged it down. When it landed, the island trembled. Its head and shoulders landed in the shallows, sending waves out into the ocean, while the rest of the body extended all the way across the dunes and into the scrubland where Coop stood.
He looked up at the giant orb in the sky and observed that it was slowly sinking toward the ground, covering nearly half of the island in a purple glow that drowned out the rest of the light. Coop threw his spear at it, naturally, but his weapon simply evaporated into mists as it approached the core of the target. At most, his attack left ripples on the enormous surface.
Coop frowned, “Should I run?” He considered if he could even escape the massive attack. If defeating the Prime Construct wasn’t enough to make the attack fizzle, he was out of ideas, and he didn’t have any desire to test his magic defense against an alien mana bomb.
Coop summoned a heavy spear and squeezed his grip as he furrowed his brows at the orb. When he heaved the denser weapon into the star, it retained its form until it was absorbed by the surface, but ultimately, it also disappeared into the spell.
“Not good.” He muttered as he made his decision whether or not to retreat and sprinted across the remaining scrubland, toward the boss’s disintegrating body, intent on finding a way to hurry the process along. At least the Prime Construct’s final attack wasn’t continuing to expand.
As he approached the supine monster, he noted that the molded construct torsos were exposed all over the body, thousands of them, facing the mana bomb in the sky. Some were lifting their weapon-limbs, and waving them as if they were empowering the attack themselves, but most were hunched over, clearly exhausted and dead. Coop swapped to his glaive and prepared to harvest their heads. He leapt onto the immobile, partially destroyed leg, and swept his glaive through the molded Constructs that occupied the enormous shin, taking them like he was reaping grain.
He leapt across the collapsing titan, finding solid footing as mana smoke spilled from the gaps in its armored skin, and specifically targeted the few Constructs that had the strength to lift their arms into the air, like they were desperately vying for his attention. His glaive slid through their bodies like a hot knife through butter.
Coop felt the pressure of the impending deadline sinking toward him from the sky as he worked his way across the torso and back down the opposite leg where the last group of weapons were raised to the sky. If there was only one tactic where he reigned supreme, it was efficiently defeating masses of enemies.
The final Construct had its head lopped off and both arms removed while the Prime Construct’s gargantuan body lost enough rigidity to be barely held together by smoke and dreams, like an enormous metal carcass barely more than a skeleton. A flash of extremely bright light made Coop flinch and gaze up at the purple star with concern, worried that it detonated in an air burst with the last of its supporters defeated.
Coop found that the star was clearly collapsing, shrinking in on itself, but the process was disappointingly slow. It seemed like Coop had succeeded, but it wasn’t obvious if the mana bomb would harmlessly dissipate or if it still had something in the tank.