Chapter 446: Core Thumping
Frosttusk, Hurricroak, Razorstella.
Frosttusk, Hurricroak, Razorstella.
Frosttusk, Hurricroak, Razorstella.
That is the name of the warriors that got my heart pumping again.
That helped get my mind back into the present.
That got my core thumping again, reminding me what it was…focused…
Focused…
Focused.
…
What was my core focused on?
Who made it?
Who made me?
Who was…she?
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‘I’m not gonna lie, I figured they would have gotten bored with fighting him one at a time by now and just gang up on him,’ Zhen Liu confided in Nepherage, ‘Then again, they’re all at the same theoretical level, so…’
[It’ll be fine milord,] Nepherage replied, [I’m fairly certain Razorstella there is about to finish the fight herself.]
‘Excellent.’
For twenty-seven minutes, after Razorstella had introduced herself, she, Hurricroak and Frosttusk all cycled through fighting Marlancer in three minutes intervals, not giving their opponent time to rest as they did.
The fighting had essentially gone into a stalemate as Marlancer proved himself to be a rather tenacious fighter.
However, at the twenty-eighth minute mark, when Razorstella was about half way done with her turn, something unusual happen.
‘Hold up…why does his power level feel…wonky?’
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[Nerbula Star Cutter!]
Razorstella immediately charged her legs with aether until they began to glow like starlight and pirouetted towards Marlancer, aiming to slice his head off in a manner that was both brutal and beautiful.
Decapitation by nebula was a hell of a way to go.
“Begone!” {Glory before death!}
Marlancer quickly condensed Aquarii aether around his harpoon and fired a blast of energized water at the encroaching cosmic bladed dancer.
Splash!
The blast of water hit Razorstella dead on, causing her to be knocked out of her pirouette and forcing her to flip through the air, the sight of which brought a smile to Marlancer’s face.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.
“Wait…”
Marlancer was just about rush forward with an attack and stab the spinning kaijin made of blades with his trusty harpoon, until he noticed something was off about his spinning opponent: her legs were still glowing with aether.
“Fuck!”
[Nebula Star Cutter: Shoot!]
Razorstella kicked downwards as she launched the nebula that was surrounding her legs at Marlancer like it was a flying guillotine.
“If I can’t take your head whole, I’ll take your whole body in halves!,” Razorstella taunted.
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[Was that a pun?!,] Hurricroak exclaimed in shock.
[Fuck you, that was clever!,] Razorstella defended herself.
[That was…cringe…]
[FROSTED COATED GLASS HOUSES! Also, you have about thirty seconds until swap time.]
[Oh thank…you…]
[Yeah, we gotta slap a heat pack on you before battle or something, Frosttusk.]
[I will…manage it…]
[That being said…I don’t think you’re gonna be having a second turn this time,] Razorstella added, [That crazy fish is charging straight for my attack.]
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‘A blade of stars? Why does it feel…familiar?’
A glowing blade made of starlight and space dust came flying towards Marlancer at breakneck speed, ready to filet him right down the middle…but he didn’t feel fear.
Nor dread.
Nor despair.
Not even anxiety.
Instead, out of everything he could feel{recall} in this moment was…nostalgia.
Nostalgia?
{Ay, ya fucking spiked-nose git. Don’t you recall how you beat me the last time I did a trick like this?}
‘I recall M3dU$In@. I recall…wait…who?’
However, before Marlancer could ponder this question any futher, his body began to move on its own and the harpoon in his hand took on decidedly…more…fog-like appearance.
Once the blade of light got close enough, Marlancer struck out with the strange fog attack.
[Enenra’s Curiosity: Fog Dispersal.]
A ball of fog bursted forth from Marlancer’s harpoon and collided with the starblade.
Instead of being cut in half as the launcher if th ebkade expected, instead, her blade got dispersed by the fog!
{There ya go, spike-nose! That’s how you do it!}
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[Whoa, what the fuck?]
[Did…did that guy just disperse my attack?!,] Razorstella exclaimed in shock, [I spent days perfecting that and every waking hour on the variants.]
[Well,] Hurricroak interjected,[we don’t really need to sleep, so that is not exactly a great or difficult task for us…]
[Not the point!]
[My turn…]
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[Frozen Cage!]
“Again?!”
After countering Razorstella’s attack with a strange art, Marlancer was forced to deal with the slow yet brutal attacks of Frosttusk once more, albeit, on very different terms now.
Instead of falling straight down on Marlancer, probably in hopes to slam a heavy fist upon the stationary kaijin, Frosttusk actually fell a couple dozen feet away from Marlancer, before correcting himself and ending up in the air space directly underneath Marlancer.
“What the hell?”
From what the fish man kaijin could seez it looked as if Frosttusk was about to fall straight into the ocean beneath them both, but that turned out to not be the case.
Crack, crack!
The moment Frosttusk reached the very surface of the ocean, a thick platform of ice quickly manifested directly beneath his feet, which was then followed by several dozen thick bars of ice that shot upwards from the sides of the ice platform and meeting at the very top of a long upward ascension, forming a cage that effectively trapped both mammoth and swordfish together.
“A silly little cage will not trap me!,” Marlancer declared as he began to charge his harpoon with aether.
“Oh no…you don’t! [Grand Swing!]”
As Marlancer was charging his attack, Frosttusk’s trunk suddenly stretched high above him in order to grab the fishman by his ankles.
[Geyser-]
Yoink!
“Rah!”
(Un)fortunately, Marlancer was so preoccupied with charging his attack, that he failed to notice the trunk grabbing his ankle until Frosttusk had pulled down hard and slam the old swordfish into the ice platform beneath him.
While the kaijin couldn’t get concussions due to lacking the brains necessarily to do so, the shock of being slammed into several inches of ice from a distance of several dozen feet above it, was still incredibly disorienting. Especially when the aforementioned ice had the trapped in place, arms and legs akimbo in a mid snow angel position.
“Can’t…move…”
“Good…”
Thump, thump, thump.
Heavy steps reverberated throughout the platform as Frosttusk took slow, lumbering steps towards Marlancer, readying himself to stomp the fish man into frozen oblivion.
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[Don’t worry…just gonna…freeze him… in…place…]
[Couldn’t you have just use that World art baked into your being to do that,] Razorstella asked.
[Too much…power needed…not…enough…heat…for me…]
[Ah.]
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{Come now, lancer! You can’t be seriously losing to an oversized opponent of all things. Don’t you remember the training I put you through?}
‘Gr@||dFang…’
Once again, Marlancer’s body began to move on its own, trying dislodge itself from the ice platform.
The method?
Making snow angels…sort of.
At his hands and feet, Marlancer channeled aether into them and began to wiggle them in such a way that they begun to dig into the ice directly beneath them.
Marlancer kept up this action up until his hands and feet began to feel the moisture of ocean water pooling into the pockets where his hands and feet were.
Good timing on his part as well, as Frosttusk was just about ready to stomp his head in.
“This’ll be…quick!”
The mammoth kaijin raised his foot and was just about to bring it down when, halfway through the motion, Marlancer made his move.
[Freezing-]
[Jet Tide!]
As Frosttusk was about to bring an aether empowered foot down onto Marlancer’s head, the swordfish kaijin intercepted it with a steady blast of ocean water that caused the art to prematurely activate, effectively cancelling the move as Frosttusk’s leg was now encased in ice, his own ice no less.
“Uh…oh…”
{Bo-ha! That’s the spirit, young lancer! The bigger your opponent, the easier it is to catch them off guard and knock em off kilter! Just need to know when and where to hit them, right?!}
As Frosttusk stumbled backwards from the sudden counter, he began to slow down considerably.
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[Heat… getting… sapped…slow…ing…e…ven…fur…ther.]
[Oh shit!]
[Well then, I guess it’s time for a sudden change in performer! Frosttusk, dismiss just the top of the cage if you could and be sure to exist stage left.]
[Su…re…]
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“Rah!”
Marlancer let out a roar as he finally freed himself from the ice platform by making liberal usage of the ocean water, and his own aether, to essentially melt the ice trapping him from the inside.
Being free from the ice however, did not mean he was out of the woods just yet.
Marlancer’s initial plan once he was freed was to rush at Frosttusk, take him out of the fight for this weird rotational thing, but then the faint scent of ozone began to tickle at his nose.
{Incoming lighting strike. Better slip away or figure out how to disperse, unless you want to get roasted.}
“Shit!”
Above the cage, Hurricroak had just finished charging up a storm cloud’s worth of lightning.
[Lighting Punisher!]
With a swinging if her arms, over a dozen bolts of lighting began to fall towards Marlancer, coiling and flying like vipers from on high.
{Hope you remember our dance lessons.}
‘$h0cKH€€L..’
