The Gamer's POV

The lord had barely freed the blade from his throat, when Levi sought to use the opening to strike. The beam of red-hot flames that had been charging in his mouth suddenly shot out with a deafening roar, tearing through the hazy air toward the skeletal figure.

However, on getting within inches of the target, the beam shattered into a spray as it collided with a translucent blue dome that flickered into existence around the lord.

The lord was unharmed, but the impact of the failed assault certainly drew his attention toward Levi. Upon setting eyes on Levi, the lord raised his flaming sword and pointed it towards him, and in the next beat, a massive pillar of concentrated fire shot from the driftwood blade. The force of the discharge smashed into Levi’s chest, engulfing and sending his massive demonic form tumbling backward across the glass-strewn sand like a discarded toy.

Levi had barely hit the ground when Glazier acted too, as it too, apparently, wanted to take advantage of an opening.

It tapped its paw on the ground and a trail of sharp, jagged ice snaked toward the lord. But just like the attack before it, the ice smashed against the shimmering blue dome and shattered into a cloud of useless frost.

At that exact moment, a wave of hot air exploded outward from the lord. Glazier quickly tried to put up a wall of ice only for it to be shattered as the expanding heat hit it like a physical hammer. The saber tiger was thrown back, his icy frame skidding across the scorched earth.

"This is not fair," Alicia cried as she shielded herself with her hands against the searing heat. "How is anyone supposed to deal damage to it?"

"By getting past that barrier!"

Xavier, who was also shielding himself from the blast, stated the obvious. When Alicia turned to him, he quickly added, "It would be impossible for anyone, but not us."

"Even so, it will be hard with the heat," Alicia protested. Her skin was already beginning to scald from the intensity of the radiation, and her face had reddened so much that it looked as though she were standing inches from a furnace.

"Plus, isn’t this sort of heat your weakness?" She added.

But Xavier didn’t respond immediately as he had his eyes sweeping around, and his mind racing with strategies. When his eyes landed on the tiger, they immediately widened.

"Glazier! Get the tiger to suppress the heat!" he shouted, already tensing his muscles to move. "Tell him to hurry because I am going in. Join me immediately!"

Before Alicia could even agree to his half-baked suicidal plan, he tapped his chest and took off in a blur.

Alicia’s frown deepened. But since Xavier had already committed to something as reckless as taking on a lord with only two Grade Twos and a Grade Three, she cursed under her breath and forced herself into motion. She turned toward the tiger several meters ahead and activated her exclusive skill. Her head and torso vanished into a ripple in the air, reappearing instantly beside the saber tiger as it tensed its muscles to lunge.

Without wasting a second, she stopped the creature before it could throw itself back into the fire.

"Stop, Glazier! You’ll melt before you reach him!"

The creature halted, then turned its frozen gaze toward her.

"Neutralize the heat instead. Create a path for us, then wait for an opening! Hurry!"

She waited a few seconds for the creature to acknowledge her before dropping her body back into the small, transparent portal. A moment later, her torso appeared atop her legs, merging back into a full body.

You see, one of Alicia’s exclusive skills allowed her to move parts of her body through transparent portals to places she could see, giving her a unique form of spatial maneuverability that made the battlefield feel much smaller than it was.

The moment she was whole again, she turned to a spot several meters away where she could see her sword on the sand. It had fallen there when Xavier had swooped in to save her earlier.

Reaching out, her hand vanished, appearing directly above the blade. She picked it up, and in a heartbeat, her hand vanished again, returning the weapon to her side.

Meanwhile, Xavier kept running... not directly toward the lord, but in a wide, sweeping circle. He needed to wait for Glazier to suppress the heat because, just as Alicia had feared, extreme temperatures were his primary weakness.

His bonded ability allowed him to alter the density of his body at will. He could decrease his mass to a fraction of its normal weight in order to double his speed or become momentarily intangible. Conversely, he could instantly harden his molecular structure to become extremely heavy or as solid as tempered steel, depending on the needs of the strike.

However, extreme temperatures were the ultimate disruptor of his molecular control, making it hard for him to maintain his structure.

Fortunately, he did not need to wait for long because Glazier acted quickly.

The creature roared, and a blizzard suddenly erupted from its icy frame, clashing violently against the Lord’s radiant heat. The air hissed as the freezing gale met the wall of heat, creating a dense, roiling fog of steam and frost that swept across the shore.

A heavy shower of snow suddenly began to fall around Glazier, and the area of effect expanded rapidly as the tiger continued to flood the shore with a super-cooled aura. Within moments, the temperature dropped to a bearable level.

The Lord, however, was not standing still and had his attention on Xavier. He charged his driftwood blade once more, aiming the tip directly at Xavier and a beam of red-hot flames tore through the steam.

Seeing that, Xavier doubled his speed, his body becoming a blur of motion as the beam scorched the sand where he had been standing a millisecond prior. Then he skidded low to the ground, kicking up a spray of grit before changing direction to head straight for the Lord, now that the air was cool enough for him to maintain his focus.

In a final burst of speed, he lunged. The Lord didn’t move to dodge, seemingly confident in the blue dome shimmering around him.

His eyes widened, however, when Xavier zoomed right through the barrier as if it weren’t there, whipping his sword in a wide, horizontal arc. The Lord instinctively brought his own blade up to parry, but the moment the steel connected, he felt as though he were defending against a massive battering ram.

The recoil of the heavy blow sent a shockwave through the skeletal figure. Seizing the opening, Xavier let out a yell and delivered a heavy kick to the Lord’s chest. The force sent the creature tumbling backward across the glass-ringed sand. He rolled once before forcing himself onto a single knee, and then his head tilted in utter disbelief.