The Legendary Fool

156:

Tom and Aleph charged forward, with him limiting his pace to match Aleph’s as they tried to flank a cluster of Deathless Sentinels from the east, making sure to keep their distance from the Stygian Titan.

A dozen or so climbers had already engaged the cluster they were targeting, with five warriors getting up and close while those with long ranged abilities sent all manner of abilities flying into the cluster at random.

It was clear that there was no real strategy to their attacks besides aiming to kill Deathless Sentinels, which he supposed made sense. If they were here on a Nexus Quest, they had no real attachment to the Nexus City whose defense they were aiding in and this way if the melee warriors, who happened to be far more effective at dispatching the sentinels got overwhelmed, their retreat could be covered.

“Should I do it?” Aleph asked, her voice raised to sound out over the din of the battle.

“Yeah,” Tom nodded, finding it prudent to test the sentinels' defenses by their own benchmarks.

Aleph started firing off crystals from afar, peppering the unfortunate deathless sentinels that comprised the outer periphery of one of the five battle formations that protected the Nether Shamans.

Tom watched as crystal made contact with white bone, carving furrows across the sentinels’ arm, leg and rarely, ribcage bones. Clearly, Aleph’s crystals weren’t powerful enough to shatter the deathless sentinels’ bones, but she wasn’t done yet.

This time, she focused on forming a single, elongated crystal that was shaped to be wickedly sharp on both ends, before using her heat infusion card to cause the crystal to glow in a red hot hue in her right palm, being immune to its effects.

Once the crystal had been sufficiently heated up, Aleph sent it careening forward after aiming it in one unlucky sentinel’s direction.

Tom was surprised to find that another sentinel, one that was wielding a compact buckler shield along with a scimitar, stepped into the trajectory of the attack in an effort to block it. Unfortunately for the sentinel, the red hot crystal tore straight through the metal shield, shattering it’s left limb before it carved a huge hole in its ribcage.

As vicious as the attack was, it ended up missing it’s spinal cord, or at least an elongated iteration of it and as a result, the sentinel somehow remained standing.

A few moments later, it broke off from the group into a charge headed right towards Aleph.

So the sentinels were within the capability of Aleph’s crystals to damage after they were heated, but a blow to the abdomen wasn’t enough to incapacitate the creature. Neither did it seem capable of feeling pain. Given that Tom was well acquainted with Nether Beasts at this point, that part didn’t really come as a surprise.

Tom sped up to meet the Deathless Sentinel’s charge, unleashing his full speed. He was a blur of motion, with Warrior’s Shardsong held to his side, the seemingly heavy weapon feeling weightless in his right hand due to his own Physical stat and the weapon’s passive Lighten skill.

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The Deathless Sentinel did not display any form of emotion at his charge, only committing to an outward arcing slash in an effort to keep him away.

Tom had such a pronounced advantage in reach, that he committed to a slash that was intended to parry the blow while aiming for the sentinel’s neck.

Their blades made contact and a muted crack sounded out in their immediate vicinity as the scimitar was blown out of the sentinel’s right hand. Warrior’s Shardsong continued forth unimpeded, severing the sentinel’s fleshless skull in one swift motion.

Due to the weapon’s lightness, at least for him, Tom had no trouble in halting the weapon’s momentum before committing to another downward slash that severed the creature’s spine.

Had Tom not been tempered in the Zelez Dungeon, he would’ve moved on and assumed the creature dead. Instead, he swept his left arm forward in a wave, two cards stealthily palmed inwards, concealing them from anyone looking at him from the enemy’s side.

His own shadow leapt forward and reshaped itself into spikes of liquid shadow that rose from within the creature’s severed form. A moment later, the liquid shadow snapped into place as obsidian metal, shattering the deathless sentinel’s remnants in too many pieces to count. ℞𝘢NỒ𝖇Ɛṡ

[Deathless Sentinels killed as a party: 1]

Sure enough, underestimating a nether beast was a one way trip to the afterworld.

Currently, he was funneling all his experience into his Shadow Wraith card, determined to at least unlock its second ability. A part of him realized that he missed his gauntlet, the mimicked Revenant Claw for its convenience and versatility, but he shook off the regret soon enough.

The newly upgraded Warrior’s Shardsong was a keystone in his daring plan, after all.

Tom’s senses began to tingle and without hesitation, he ducked. A heavy arrow whizzed past the exact spot where his head had been moments ago, reminding him that he very much was on a hostile battlefield.

Before he could break out into a sprint to retaliate, a streak of glowing red-hot crystal whizzed past him and struck the bow-wielding deathless sentinel that had taken the shot right in the head.

It was a display of phenomenal accuracy and Tom had to stop himself from doing a double take as the sentinel’s skull shattered into countless pieces, parts of it half-melted due to the sheer heat contained in the attack.

[Deathless Sentinels killed as a party: 2]

‘Oh,’ Tom thought, realizing that the skull was the weakness instead of the neck. ‘Well, that makes things easier.’

Waiting on the battlefield was a good way to take an arrow to the noggin, so Tom kicked off the ground in a frontal charge against a sea of deathless sentinels against whom he would long run out of both stamina and SP in a prolonged battle.

Good think they only needed to kill twelve more.

The fight didn’t even prove to be a challenge. In the beginning, Tom took the lead in the kill count, even though he was avoiding going all out after his initial outburst.

His whole plan was hinging on the fact that they would go unnoticed by both the Nether Shamans and the Stygian Titan. That didn’t stop Deathless Sentinels from keeling over randomly with holes in the back of their skulls, the shattered remains of a crystal glinting from within.

The source of the attack escaped Tom’s visual acuity twice, but considering that their party’s kill count had gone up each of those times, there was no doubt in his mind that Zirel was practicing his assassination skills.

Aleph’s rare artifact wasn’t suited for an encounter with multiple weaker enemies, since she needed to strike them repeatedly to get a speed boost. Instead, she had formed a sword with her crystals, before heating it with her Heat Infusion card to create a weapon that was akin to a beam of plasma.

Tom found himself almost feeling bad for the melted skulls she left in her furious wake, stopping only after they hit the required number.

[Deathless Sentinels killed as a party: 14]

It was finally time to put his abilities to the test.

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