Chapter 459 (2/2)

This time, when Cyndra came, Randidly stood his ground, focusing on Spear Phantom’s Embrace. When she attacked, he weaved his way through the storm of blows, while behind him a strange, tentacled creature rose out of the ground.

“Grrrrummmmmm….” The Grove Defender said, sucking in a mouthful of air, and then its tentacles shot outwards, twining seamlessly around Randidly’s body, aiming for Cyndra.

While her eyes traced this new threat, Randidly lashed out with his spear, striking at her side. Almost offhand, Cyndra deflected the blow to the side, and then Randidly was forced to scramble back to avoid a pincer attack she had launched with her two knives.

It really looked like a tentacle monster, with about 50 tentacles emerging from the fat blob that was its body, and about half that from its head. Several wrapped around Cyndra and Randidly heard and felt a sharp discharge of electricity. Randidly winced. That wasn’t gonna work.

And indeed, Cyndra didn’t even seem to notice, instead, she ignored the tentacles and launched herself towards Randidly again. He raised his spear, then aimed a thrust towards her. As she raised her knives to knock it to the side, the Control monster used its different grips on her to discharge electricity, and when that failed to work again, it just twisted as hard as it could. It could not change her body’s position, due to her vastly superior Strength, but it did manage to rotate her body in mid-air.

Randidly scored a slash across her ribs but was forced to withdraw abruptly, because Cyndra unleashed a massively powerful blow that would not have been fine to take. He made some distance, but Cyndra just used that to turn and grab the tentacles of the Grove Defender, pulling it towards her. It had grips with about a third of its tentacles on her, and another third on various cracks in the arena, struggling to resist, but inexorably, her unbelievable Strength won out, and she dragged it forward.

Lucretia? Plan A?

….happening now. Buy another minute.

This had better fucking work.

Randidly rushed forward, spear raised. When Cyndra turned to face him, he held nothing back, heedlessly burning through his Stamina, smashing her again and again, using his edge in Perception and Reaction to move around her in unpredictable ways, reading her movements. Again and again, the summon unleashed its electric shock, and only on the most recent discharge was it enough to make Cyndra narrow her eyes-

Careful!

Randidly created distance and produced the pistol, but at that moment Cyndra’s hand blurred, her knives slipping out of her sleeve and smashing the pistol from out of his hand. Immediately, the probes accelerated, only three still.

A root caught the pistol and fired.

“I expected her not to notice, but did you also forget?” Randidly asked, almost confused when he caught all three probes with the combustion of Aether. He was weakened, but Cyndra was still hacking at the body of the summon. It took about 5 slices, because of how stringy its body was, and Randidly was filled with a strange thankfulness.

After all, it wasn’t clear that he could survive that many.

But then his senses sharpened, because 8 probes raced forward, heading for his relatively thin Aether defense. Instantly, Randidly released everything he could muster, and Lucretia, who had been slowly learning from watching the way that the Creature interacted with Aether, and learned from it. So when she spread her hands, a new pattern of Aether shapes emerged.

They were tightly pressed together, and squatter, and hopefully that would buy them a little more time. Randidly didn’t have time to watch the effect, however, because Cyndra had finished hacking apart the Grove Guardian, and twisted and threw her knives before he could react.

The two heading for him he deflected, but a third hit his pistol through the trigger guard, carrying the pistol across the room, at a speed that Randidly’s roots would have a hard time grasping in time.