Winters Bite 8 (1/2)

Archfiends were ridiculous.

This was Boxxy’s honest assessment after delivering a single hit using the body of one. It began to truly understand why Arms was so pigheaded, arrogant and reckless. It would probably be the same if it had this much brute strength at its fingertips every moment of every day. In fact, as it was right now, the Arch-Mimic was probably above the Archfiend when it came to physical prowess, as it had a doppelganger’s dense body mass to go along with her raw muscle. Not to mention its cunning and devious nature to go along with it. It truly was a recipe for destruction.

One that the ‘chef’ was planning to share with a certain someone.

“Prepare your anus, Setre! ‘Cuz when I get my hands on you, I’m gonna shove my dick so far up your ass you’ll be choking on my cum!”

Boxxy was a bit taken aback by its own words. While it definitely wanted to mess with its opponent by threatening her with some intimate one-on-one physical relations, that wasn’t quite what it had in mind. However, the Arms-esque dialogue just leaped out of its throat before it even realized. It would appear it was much more difficult to completely suppress the demon’s personality traits than it had originally anticipated.

“That- I’d like to see you try, shitstain!”

It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Setre’s unsteady, shrill tone of voice suggested the overtly fiendish line had done its job nonetheless. Come to think of it, the reaction she showed when it pulled a ‘surprise Punchy’ on her during their last meeting was pretty exaggerated, too. Perhaps she had some sort of deep-seated dislike towards the fiend part of the demonic spectrum?

Whatever the case, Boxxy decided to roll with it for a bit.

“Don’t mind if I do, bitch-tits!”

The Arch-Mimic charged towards its opponent while screaming obscenities at the top of its lungs. Being the colossal golem that it was, the Crystal Maiden was much too slow to offer any kind of significant reaction. A few of the minor minions on its battlements tried flinging their Spells at the incoming target, but their attempts were so pathetic that Boxxy couldn’t help but mock them.

“HAHAHAHA! GET THAT WEAK SHIT OUTTA HERE!”

The four-meter tall armored behemoth smashed its spiked shoulder plate into the bottom of the walking fortress’s defensive barrier. The impact produced a rather thunderous noise, followed by a cracking noise as the shield began to buckle. The crystal golems on the inside began reinforcing it, but Boxxy wouldn’t let them have an easy time of it. It firmly planted its feet in the ground, combined its three left arms into a single massive limb much like it had done on its right side, and proceeded to pummel the everliving shit out of it.

“ORA ORA ORA ORA!”

While giving voice to the words that welled up within its breast, of course.

Setre wasn’t going to just sit back and take this, though. She was already swinging her warhammer at her absurd opponent, but this strike was different from the others. Rather than trying to crush it flat or skewer it with the crystal aftershocks of an impact with the ground, she instead opted for a more horizontal swing. The djinn had simply decided that, since squashing the fiend-thing wasn’t going to work, then punting it away would probably be a better idea.

Boxxy naturally saw the pendulum-like attack coming, but it didn’t move to dodge. It turned its body around to the side so that it was facing the oncoming blow. It then pulled its massive right fist backwards as if it was going to try to match the Crystal Maiden’s power with its own. Whether or not it could actually do so was besides the point, as this move was a feint.

It leapt above the hammer’s head at the last moment, twisted its body around in midair and delivered a spinning lariat to the weapon’s handle, just above the massive block of fake ice. The shifty shapeshifter had already felt firsthand how this stuff was much more fragile than it appeared to be, so it wasn’t the least bit surprised when the oversized shaft snapped. This was something it wanted to do earlier, but wasn’t sure whether it could pull it off as just a doppelganger. But now that it had borrowed the Siegebreaker Skill in addition to adding an Archfiend’s ridiculous physique on top of its own, the outcome was no longer up for debate.

Now liberated from the rest of the weapon, the cracked hammer head tumbled across the mostly flat courtyard. It bounced thrice, producing an unfocused deluge of crystalline spikes every time it skimmed across the ground. It then fell off of the mountaintop arena altogether, landing somewhere at the bottom of the summit with a loud crash. Setre seemed to have been left momentarily stunned by this sudden development, as she remained frozen in her post-swing pose in disbelief.

What must have been the sixtieth Meteor of the day then crashed into her barrier directly in front of her face, causing it to finally crumble and shatter as if it were made of glass.

“Fuuuck!” she cursed while the flaming remnants fell onto her borrowed body. “Fine then! Phase two it is!”

The instant she said that, the Crystal Maiden’s bulky castle-like facade began cracking up all on its own and falling off her body in large chunks. This caused Boxxy to back off for the moment, as it wasn’t looking forward to being buried under the resulting debris. Even if the mineral making up the golem’s body was more fragile than it appeared, the sheer mass of those falling pieces could not be underestimated.

By the time the Arch-Mimic was safely out of range of the collapsing crystals, it found itself facing a very different Crystal Maiden from the one it had been fighting until now. This one was thin, slick and elegant, to the point of being basically an animate skeleton. Her body had stopped spewing out those golem attendants of hers, but they no longer had any battlements or ramparts to occupy anyway. Her face and head in particular had become perfectly smooth like an upside-down egg, save for the two glowing blue orbs that were probably her eyes. She was also shorter by about five meters, and her broken weapon had reformed itself into a plain-looking spear.

“Come on then, dodge this!”

Setre thrust said spear directly at Boxxy while moving at speeds a body that big really should not have been capable of. The weapon’s unexpected velocity caught the shapeshifter off guard, and it failed to completely avoid it. The sharpened tip of the crystalline weapon cleaved right through its left shoulder, separating its freakish arm from the rest of the body. The severed limb fell to the ground, whereupon it dissolved into a bubbling brown sludge that evaporated in a manner of seconds.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Setre let out another jeer as she pulled back her weapon and began stabbing at her opponent repeatedly. The golem body she was possessing was likely used to handling such a thing, but the djinn herself was obviously an amateur. She wasn’t paying attention to her damaged knee in the slightest, which wasn’t moving in the way she told it to. This caused what would otherwise be pinpoint strikes to veer off slightly, making it easier for Boxxy to turn her attacks into near misses.

The dungeon master was still paying attention to her surroundings, however, as she was actively dodging Xera’s Meteors. This ‘phase two’ of hers was a lot more nimble than her previous form, which allowed her to exploit that Spell’s major weakness - the several second delay between casting the Spell and it actually hitting its target. The Pyromancer’s other projectile based magic, such as Fireball and Magma Missile, proved to be just as ineffective at landing on-target. And even when they did, the damage inflicted was lackluster at best. Even Inferno wasn’t doing much since Setre would just hop out of its area of effect.

Left with no other options, the ex-succubus was forced to rely on her Scorching Ray Spell. It was definitely the most effective Spell in her mystic arsenal in this situation. But even then she couldn’t maintain the beam on her target since channeling it required her to stand still. This would, in turn, invite Setre’s spear to strike at her, forcing Xera to dodge with Mist Form.

As for Ambrosia, she was now struggling to make any sort of impact on the fight. Her Rock Walls were barely even obstacles in the face of those massive thrusts, and her wind-based offensive magic was too underdeveloped to be useful against a hard target like that. She still healed her ‘lord’ whenever it got clipped, but she had the feeling all her efforts were doing was delaying the inevitable.

A conclusion that Boxxy had reached as well. It couldn’t get close enough to the gigantic golem to apply its ridiculous muscle power, nor could it find a gap to use significant magic. Or at least not without putting itself at significant risk. Breaking the weapon was also out of the question since intercepting those spear thrusts was like asking to get killed. Buying time for Snack to do her thing was also ill-advised, as the djinn’s MP reserves were on the brink of being exhausted.

Once that happened, she wouldn’t be able to avoid Setre’s attacks with her Mist Form, leading to her certain albeit temporary demise and reducing the three-on-one to a two-on-one.

That was hardly Boxxy’s most pressing concern, though. There was barely a minute left before its Malefic Union came undone, at which point it would probably be left momentarily immobilized. It was only natural that a Skill that was extremely painful during activation would have some sort of backlash when it ended. In fact, it was highly likely this gap was precisely what Setre was waiting for.

“Is that all you got, fuck-boy? Where’s all that bravado you had earlier?”

To make matters worse, Setre’s constant insults were steadily beginning to cloud its judgement. If Boxxy were its normal self, then this sort of stuff wouldn’t even phase it. However, those ceaseless provocations were causing Arms’s highly confrontational nature to flare up, making it increasingly more agitated and annoyed with every syllable. And since the Arch-Mimic couldn’t slap the shit out of her, it was unable to vent its mounting frustrations. It felt like it might give into the demonic rage that welled up from within and do something profoundly idiotic well before it reached the time limit.

Therefore, after considering all the options, Boxxy made the decision to abandon the fight. Even if the opponent was faster, that was only in this mostly flat and vacant ground. As long as it used the rest of the dungeon’s treacherous terrain and structures to its advantage, then it could easily avoid the Crystal Maiden long enough to escape. At that point it would be a simple matter to regroup with its familiars outside the confines of the dungeon, formulate a plan of action and challenge it again.

That would have definitely been the right call in that situation, yet Boxxy stopped itself just as it was about to give the command to retreat.

Because if what its Eyes of the Dead God Skill had just revealed to it was true - and it had zero reason to doubt this information - then the situation was about to change.

“Just try and take this-! … Huh?”

The dungeon master’s verbal abuse was suddenly cut off by her own surprised voice as the golem she was controlling suddenly began to tip over. She flailed her arms around in an attempt to regain her balance, but it was a lost cause since legs weren’t obeying her commands. She was forced to stab her spear into the ground and lean on it as if it were a walking stick just to avoid falling over. She then looked towards her feet, but had difficulty processing what she saw.

Which was only to be expected considering she saw nothing. There was seemingly nothing wrong with her lower limbs, yet her ankles refused to separate from one another no matter how much she tried. She then suddenly spotted something moving across the ripped up battlefield beneath her. It was a shimmer of some kind that she had difficulty tracking. It was clearly there, yet any attempt to narrow her sight on it made her eyes slip right off it.

She wasn’t given any time to study this bizarre phenomenon though, as it reached its destination merely a second after she spotted it.

*SCHWING*

There was a very harsh sound of two hard surfaces grinding against each other for an instant, followed by Setre’s spear abruptly snapping in half. Now losing its last support, the Crystal Maiden’s massive body finally hurtled towards the ground. There was no doubt the impact would do a huge amount of damage, but Boxxy wasn’t going to wait for it. It ran towards the lurching golem and leapt into the air, placing itself on a collision course with its mostly blank face. The dungeon master made an effort to block it with her hands, but she couldn’t make it in time to stop the dropkick to her face.

*CRASH*

The Arch-Mimic bore clean through the Crystal Maiden’s head. It didn’t shatter it completely, but still left a gaping hole filled with jagged edges in its wake. This probably wouldn’t be enough to finish off the golem, but that wasn’t its goal. The shapeshifter’s true aim was the dungeon master’s real body, which it had grabbed on its way through the crystalline skull. She couldn’t move a muscle since her spirit was still inhabiting the golem, so she had no chance of stopping what was about to happen next.

Boxxy spun around in the air so it would land on its belly and positioned Setre’s limp body beneath its own. Time seemed to grind to a halt as the frail female form hurtled towards the hard ground with a five hundred kilogram mass of steel and muscle pressing down on top of her. Needless to say, what was left of Setre’s flesh after the horrific impact was a substance that could only be described as ‘djinn paste.’

“Aarrgh!” wailed the disembodied demon. “What just happened? What are you doing out there?!”

Boxxy merely stood up, turned towards the fallen and twitching golem, and raised a middle finger towards Setre’s orphaned consciousness while still coated in her remains.

“I’m winning, you cheeky cunt!”

It took a run up, leapt into the air once more and landed squarely onto the Crystal Maiden’s lower back. It then lifted its right foot all the way up to its head and delivered what was essentially the finishing blow.

“War Stomp!”

Its Martial Art enhanced armored boot plowed into the golem’s spine, or at least the spot where it would be if it had one. The crystalline construct shuddered immensely as its entire torso began to crack up. Chunks of various sizes and shapes broke off her body and fell to the ground, while its relatively thin waist was snapped in half. A Meteor then fell onto the remnants of its head and completed the decapitation process, completely robbing Setre of any further visual or auditory input.

Neither the djinn nor the golem were quite dead just yet, though. Even in this sorry state, the Crystal Maiden’s arms continued to flail around blindly. It even had a whopping 60,000 HP left according to Boxxy’s divine eyesight, but it was clear Setre had already lost. She couldn’t even move her legs since her lower body had been physically separated from the rest of her by that War Stomp. In fact, the only reason she still clinged to some semblance of life was because of the dungeon core embedded in the golem’s chest. The Arch-Mimic hadn’t been able to notice its presence until it was right on top of it, but it wasn’t all that surprised by it either.

After all, a being as stupidly massive as the Crystal Maiden probably required obscene amounts of energy to move around. Not to mention it would need something potent magical reinforcement to keep its feet from collapsing under its own weight. These sort of drawbacks were why monsters taller than seven meters or so were exceedingly rare. Not even the demonic Overlords crossed that threshold. In fact, the only ones who did so regularly were Adult and Elder Dragons, but those things defied common sense by their very existence, so they were hardly usable as examples.

“Snack!” yelled out Boxxy as it leapt down off the immobilized dungeon boss.

“Yes, Master?!”

The succubus-in-spirit appeared in front of her Master out of nowhere. She was twitching, rubbing her thighs together and panting heavily, but Boxxy had no intention of answering her perverted expectations.

“See to it that you finish off our ‘host,’ will you?”

“B-b-but-! My MP is empty! Yeah! I can’t use magic without MP! And since a good dicking will recharge my MP, then-!”

“Then get it from Ambrosia. She has plenty of MP, doesn’t she.”

The dryad in question nodded from the side in confirmation.

“Yes, Master…” said the djinn in a devastated voice.

“Do this thing properly and I’ll see about turning your pussy into a sopping mess or whatever later tonight, alright?”

“Yes, Master!”