Just a foot before the spear reached Sasha's head, she swerved, shifting her position with preternatural reflexes. Angry, afraid, confused—the beast had countered her attack again, and that was all she could do.
Another spear was already forming above the beast, poised to strike where she had just moved.
Buddhist Hand was only moments away from them, but he was too late. Even the spear she had dodged would explode, leaving Sasha and Dicing Edge as barely recognizable mangled flesh and bones.
It appeared instantly—the eerie plague that caused phantom poking in everyone vanished. The beast drained its body visibly, its core glowing brighter than ever before. It was burning itself from within. The spear it had sent suddenly swerved direction and went directly toward the distance.
Buddhist Hand reached them and flashed them away from the beast, which had gone mad, harming itself. Spears formed and released toward that direction with furious intensity, one after another.
"ATTACK!" Buddhist Hand shouted, his voice thundering through the chaos.
Dicing Edge seemed out of the picture, but his shout woke her up, though she could do nothing. Sasha was immediately teleported twenty meters beside the beast where Buddhist Hand waited with the fury of a madman.
They needed to take it down now that Elias had attracted its attention again.
"This is insane. How can they still fight?" One of the Explorer Trainees exclaimed. He was fast enough to grasp all that was happening but couldn't imagine keeping a healthy mind in such chaos.
A hundred members of Buddhist Hand's group had long marched to the ruins and were watching the battle from a distance. Their hands clenched as they witnessed Buddhist Hand's brave confrontation.
Everyone in the ruins had stopped exploring to watch. The most wrecked among them was Elias Thunderspark.
He was experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions beyond anything he had ever felt. His beloved sister had come close to death too many times to count, each time he was about to save her before something intervened.
"That team is a dream team!" One of his team members exclaimed in awe.
"But who the fuck is the red bodyguard?" A female from his team asked, more amazed that a single boy could send a calamity beast into absolute mad fury.
Elias Thunderspark, still on edge, muttered, "A boy that scared away a Rank 2 Calamity Beast. Red River Horror, to be exact. That's why he has red skin!"
Most people around heard him and understood the terror this pitiful Spiking was feeling.
The object of their conversation was on life support, escaping danger by a hairline again and again. The second roar from Buddhist Hand told him the boy needed help. All he had done was show intention to attack the beast with a black hole, and now he was almost regretting it.
Pulse talent activated and he drifted endlessly as he cued while bombarded reached hom. The pulses came in rapid succession, his stone craft breaking and reforming as he moved away.
Elias only saw blur after blur, his body wrecked and mind jumbled, but one thing he knew: he was dodging before the beast could strike. That was the only way he was surviving, because his energy was at an all-time low, and that acceleration wasn't coming.
His assumption proved correct—he moved before each attack came. Like a fish drifting through softened ground, over and over and over again.
BOOOM!
An attack finally reached him!
***
Silence fell as if the world held its breath. The ruins were devastated beyond recognition. Long, thick spears littered the area, still humming with violent vibration.
A boy was embedded in one of the remaining buildings, two foot spears protruding from his thigh and hand.
"Haha! I survived!" he laughed hysterically about his miraculous survival, teetering on the edge of madness.
The ground was decorated with large, forcefully carved trenches. In one that had turned to fine dust due to bombardment lay a tomboy with dried face and unfocused eyes. Flashes of white light were the only indication she was still alive.
She was half-buried in debris.
Above, on the dome, hung another person. A thick twenty-foot spear had pierced their stomach, pinning them to the structure. She blinked slowly, blood flowing from the wound and coating the entire spear. The weapon drank it like a vampire.
In one of the deepest trenches was a hole about six meters deep. There lay a large boy, arms and legs spread, eyes closed, face tight with pain. On his chest, a twenty-foot spear still spun lazily, trying to pierce him but failing.
"Elias! Elias! ELIAS!" Hurried footsteps echoed as someone ran along trenches that extended three hundred meters from the battle's epicenter. A young girl with a bloodied face and brown hair streaked with white approached, anxiety filling her features as she reached the end of the massive trench.
It plunged as deep as ten meters, decorated with more than ten twenty-foot spears that hummed with deep vibration and emanated a violent plague.
"ELIAS!" Her voice grew louder, bordering on hysteria.
"Stop shouting, I can hear you!" A hoarse, tired voice replied from the trench's depths.
She sighed in relief, almost collapsing before she flared, "Stop ordering me around, bodyguard!"
Seconds later came a reply with a pained groan: "..oorry, boss. Are we still alive?"
"It seems like it!" She shouted back.
"The beast?" he asked.
"Dealing with the thunder!"
"Good. You're fine!"
Her voice lowered, "I'm fine!"
"Good. Let me rest."
"Come out! Do you still have all your limbs, or did you lose them?" she demanded.
"How would I know? Haha!" Elias laughed weakly. "I can't feel them!"
Her mood sank at his words. From deep in the trench, a shattered place turned to soil where a spear was embedded began to move. A bloodied face emerged.
Eyes filled with dust and blood, face painted with scratches and gashes. His eyes watered, tears washing away the dust.
"The beast is gone, right?" Elias tried to confirm.
"I dealt with it," she said. Sasha needed to see him whole before her mind could rest.
The ground shifted, and he floated out, seated on a stone craft chair. His uniform was torn, skin and flesh wrecked, bones protruding from his thigh, biceps, and ribs, but he bled slowly.
His breathing was labored, he couldn't move his neck, but he managed a genuine smile.
"Thank goodness. You didn't lose your arms this time!" She said, half-sorry, half-joking. "You even made yourself a throne."
"Yeah. My mastery increases!"
"Good. I'm glad!"
Elias, drained of all his talent's energy, didn't need much to control the stone craft as he drifted forward. Due to the book.
"What in Six Leaf Clover!" Elias exclaimed as he took in the devastation around him. "This whole section was properly wrecked." His eyes veer up. "How the hell did she get up there? Is she even alive?"