Chapter Fourteen: Fighting the Phoenix
“This is the place?” I asked. Before the revival of the Phoenix, I’d brought my allies to the midpoint on the mountain where the birds were sealed, based on the information obtained from Ren and the others. Our intent was to investigate a certain object in the shrine here . . . the sealed Phoenix itself.
The shrine was very well-maintained.
“This is the shrine with the seal,” I confirmed.
“Yeah, this is the place,” Ren replied. Both he and Itsuki pointed at something inside . . . a statue. It was like one of those Buddhist thousand-armed Kannon statues I’d seen in temples in Japan seated on a carved flower.
“That statue can be moved around. Using the mechanism at the base will open a path forward,” Itsuki explained.
“Although you need to complete a quest and get permission from those in the shrine first,” Ren added.
“Fair enough. I’d say we’ve already done that part,” I quipped. Prior to when we set out, someone who apparently tended to this shrine had indeed given us his permission. We were dealing with the kind of secrets that were passed down from monk to monk now.
Ren and Itsuki started to manhandle the carved petals, tugging them up and down. It was like some kind of puzzle box.
Eventually there was a clicking sound. Ren and Itsuki gave the statue a push and it finally moved.
Motoyasu? Oh, I’d ordered him to just play with his filolials.
“This is the way,” Itsuki said.
“Waaaah!” Ignoring Rishia’s fear, Ren and Itsuki proceeded to lead us down the stairs that had appeared beneath the moved statue.
At the bottom of them we found a stone monument. It was bright red from heat.
“So this is the seal of the Phoenix,” I stated.
“It’s incredible. A lot like the one that sealed the Tyrant Dragon Rex, don’t you think?” Raphtalia said. I agreed with her.
“I sense an incredible vitality here. We cannot underestimate this foe, brother,” Atla contributed.
“Indeed,” Fohl confirmed. Even though it was still sleeping, Atla and Fohl were clearly already feeling pressure from the presence of our upcoming adversary.
“Don’t do anything to set it off,” I cautioned. Taking all due care not to do anything that might break it, we examined the seal carefully and determined that it was going to break in accordance with the time displayed by the sand timer.
“Think we could get it to revive sooner if we wanted, Ren?” I asked. We needed as much time to prepare as we could get, so I certainly wasn’t going to do anything so stupid.
However, Ren was staring at the stone in shock, my words falling on deaf ears. The same for Itsuki. There was no expression on his face, but his hands were shaking.
“What’s up?” I asked, maybe not wanting to know.
“This is impossible, surely. Why’s it already broken?!” Ren exclaimed.
“Huh?” I asked, tilting my head. In response, Ren and Itsuki both pointed slowly at a pile of rubble next to the stone seal. Having had it pointed out to me, I looked more closely. It appeared to have been a statue of the Phoenix.
Then, taking a look at the pieces, it appeared to have been busted up pretty recently.
“This isn’t going to weaken the seal, is it?” I asked. It would be a real problem if the time until the seal broke had been shortened, or anything like that.
“That’s fine. Or it should be. That’s also not the problem though,” Ren replied. What else could it be, then? I had a nasty feeling twisting in my gut.
According to Ren and the others, no one like Kyo was present, who had taken control of the Spirit Tortoise. So that wasn’t a real possibility. But if it was something Ren and Itsuki did know about, and wasn’t related to the breaking of the seal, then I could think a few things. None were good.
“The problem is when the seal breaks and the statue nearby has been destroyed!” Ren exclaimed, pointing again at the broken Phoenix statue.
“The kind of problem I’m thinking of . . . would be in game terms—it’d mean a harder boss fight,” I guessed. I really didn’t want this to be true, but I asked them the most likely thing that came to mind.
The bosses that fought in special quests during certain video games could sometimes be enhanced depending on the approach taken in fighting them. Depending on the game, there might be rare items that could only be obtained from those kinds of enhanced bosses, but of course, it also made defeating the boss more difficult.
If such an element was in play here, who the hell would ever risk it? If the results were the same between normal and hard, wouldn’t you play on normal?
I certainly didn’t want to have to try my hand at a boss on steroids just for the chance of rare items when getting killed would mean I was actually dead.
Ren and Itsuki both nodded at my guess.
“That’s right. If you come to the place where the Phoenix is sealed with the flag triggered for having defeated it once and one of the statues is destroyed, you can challenge the hard-mode Phoenix. It drops some powerful gear, so it’s endgame content,” Ren explained.
“Same kind of thing for me,” Itsuki added. “There was an event to fight a stronger version of the Phoenix.” Man, this was giving me a headache. I’d hoped to fight the normal Phoenix, win, and get past this problem. But now we had to fight a more powerful version for no good reason?
This wasn’t like the story quests in an Internet game. It was a battle with a boss far harder than the story version.
“Maybe it broke due to the passage of time, or maybe . . . In any case, this isn’t a game. This is reality, so I’m really hoping I’m wrong.” Ren said. There was weight to his words.
“Think we could piece it back together? Like a jigsaw puzzle?” I offered, a little optimistically. Both Ren and Itsuki remained silent, perhaps unsure of exactly how to answer.
Yeah, that probably wasn’t a thing. Whatever technique had been used to create the seal, it wouldn’t be so easy to just glue it back together.
“Anyway, I’m just glad we didn’t end up having to suddenly fight this enhanced Phoenix without any warning. That takeaway is enough from this. Maybe we’ll try to weaken it again by repairing the statue . . .” As I spoke, I happened to notice something. On the wall of the room, there was a picture very much like that from the scrolls about the Phoenix that we saw stored in the castle.
This one, though, looked more . . . sinister than the pictures back in the town, perhaps. It looked like it had a blazing circle of light behind it.
It even showed the Phoenix statue being destroyed. Thanks for the tip, hah!
“. . . and also look into whether the statue crumbled naturally or someone broke it while also preparing to fight the enhanced Phoenix!” I regained my train of thought and finished.
“Okay!” Ren agreed.
“Understood,” Itsuki said with understandably less enthusiasm.
“This is all turning into quite the big deal,” Raphtalia said. I could only agree with her. At least the seal had been protected. That was something, but still . . .
This hidden content was utter bullshit!
“Whatever comes, we just have to deal with it!” Atla added. I mean, she wasn’t wrong.
The temple monks later explained that one day they had gone to check on the sealing stone and the statue had already been destroyed. We brought in a specialist in these things and their investigation revealed that it had been broken quite recently. However, in this instance, “recently” was quite a broad term. It could have been anything between a few days to a few months, making the whole analysis pretty unreliable.
Was it the work of man or just a natural disaster? It was a pain in my ass either way.
And so the days passed until the appointed time for the battle with the Phoenix.
The day of the Phoenix battle.
I expanded the blue timer icon located in one corner of my vision.
00:12
It was twelve minutes until it happened, then.
This wasn’t my first time in this kind of situation, but my heart was pounding nonetheless. I knew I just had to fight as normal . . . even better than normal, but still I couldn’t get used to this feeling.
The surrounding area had all been evacuated of residents, meaning only the heroes, their respective retinues, and the coalition army now remained here.
This wasn’t a sudden occurrence, like it had been with the Spirit Tortoise. The evacuation had been completed without any particular problems. I’d also made sure they weren’t going to let anyone in who might get in the way.
The queen and the coalition army leaders were taking command at the back. The heroes, including me, were on the front lines. S’yne was on high alert too. She apparently hadn’t seen anything suspicious yet.
I just had to pray that nothing untoward was going to happen.
“We’ve done all we can to prepare to fight the Phoenix. Everyone fight as hard as you can in order to return from this alive,” I commanded from the head of the army. My simple order was met with cheers of agreement from the slaves and the coalition army as one.
This had been a long time coming. Reflecting back on everything that had happened, I looked up at the place where the Phoenix was sealed.
We should be tackling the waves, really, and yet here we were, spending so much time on this.
We’d chosen a barren area just down the mountain on the path to the town, thinking it would be easiest to fight it there.
We’d also looked at all sorts of other ways to fight it, like maybe using the gravity field from the Spirit Tortoise gear to drag the high-altitude one down. All sorts of ideas had been kicked about.
The issue with that one was the range. It was unexpectedly short, so we’d only know if it worked on the Phoenix once we actually got to test it.
The difficulty there was that I’d have to ride up to the high-altitude Phoenix and jump onto it before I could use it. I wouldn’t be able to fly on Gaelion if I used the gravity field on my shield while on his back. And if I changed to it during flight, we would drop to the ground.
Ren, Motoyasu, and Itsuki had similar weapons, but we just didn’t know how effective they would be. In terms of the accessories prepared for the final battle, we’d gone with a unified approach across the board to increase the power of the skill each person was most adept with.
I’d just wanted a simple increase in firepower.
Something a bit trickier might have worked too, but something simple seemed easier to handle and would also keep the loss of accessories themselves low.
“Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia said.
“What?” I was on edge.
“Let’s do our best,” she affirmed.
“You said it,” I agreed with a nod. Then Atla spoke up.
“Life force imbued with heat is starting to gather in the surrounding area. Master Naofumi, please be careful.”
“I will,” I replied. The sand timer now had less than three minutes left.
“This time, we’ll settle things,” Ren said.
“I’m with you,” Itsuki managed.
“We shall do this, I say!” Motoyasu added. All of them gripped their weapons as they spoke.
They weren’t wrong. Enhanced Phoenix or not, if we couldn’t follow the plan and defeat it without too much hassle, then our future battles looked like bleak affairs indeed.
We had the power of four heroes on the field. We should be able to finish this, no problem.
0:01
With one minute left, I focused my awareness and incanted some magic: “All Liberation Aura!”
I poured in magic and life force, converted it into the widest possible area, and gave the entire front line the increase to all the stats I had used on Filo during the race.
00:00
A sound like breaking glass, exactly like the one we heard before, rang out. A violent shockwave shook my vision, also just like before. Then a fire pillar rose from the middle of the mountain and the twin Phoenixes rose up into the air. They looked exactly like the images on the wall.
Not those from the town, of course. They looked like those from the mountain temple . . . the ones with the halo behind them.
Two powerful screeches rang out across the vicinity. And so the fight between our forces and the blazing Phoenixes began.
Just as we had expected. After having appeared, both Phoenixes flew straight toward the closest source of lives gathered together—us. It was just like with the Spirit Tortoise.
A number “8” hovered in my field of vision.
“Everyone, don’t mess up the timing of the final blow, whatever you do!” I shouted.
“I know!” Ren returned, leading the attack on the low-altitude Phoenix, which was already closing in. Another screech rang out. The high-altitude Phoenix flapped its wings in our direction, causing a rain that mixed feathers with fireballs to pelt down around us.
“Shooting Star Shield!” I yelled. Adding some life force considerably increased the range and defense boost of the skill. Not to mention, the sharing of the power-up method acquired in Q’ten Lo meant that my own defense had been considerably increased. That was enough to protect the very front line, but not enough for the rest.
We’d taken all of this into account, of course.
“Just like we planned!” I ordered. I turned around to see not only the slaves, but also the coalition army agreeing with me.
It went without saying, I didn’t think I could protect all of these people. But I’d done everything I could think of to make that a possibility.
I proceeded to deploy Gather toward the incoming rain of fire. It was a technique that wasn’t a skill, as it was created through cooperation between Atla and me.
Like a huge funnel, it started to collect all of the blazing missiles in front of me. I could change my response based on the severity of the attack. Meanwhile, everyone else would focus their attacks on the Phoenix coming in at low altitude.
I took the incoming fire on my shield. The sensation imparted to me was like heavy rain hitting an umbrella. I had the enhanced Spirit Tortoise Shell equipped.
Spirit Tortoise Shell (awakened) 80/80 AT
<abilities locked> equip bonus: skills: S Float Shield, Reflect Shield,
special effect: gravity shield, C soul recovery, C magic snatch, C gravity shot, vitality boost, magic defense (large), lightning resistance, nullify SP drain, magic assistance, spell support, growth power
special equip effect: comet shield (Spirit Tortoise)
mastery level: 100 item enchant level 8, defense 10% up dragon spirit defense 50, fire resistance up status enchant magic +30
It had been enchanted with the attacks of the Phoenix in mind. It should allow me to now considerably reduce all fire-based attacks. Indeed, in regard to the current stream of burning death from above, I was neither burning nor anything close to death.
It might be an attack from the enhanced Phoenix, but it looked like I could still hack it.
That said, it also covered far too wide a range for me to protect the entire coalition army. That, of course, had been accounted for.
Upon examining what the effects of Shooting Star Shield (Spirit Tortoise) were, I had discovered that it turned the shape of the protective shield into a tortoise’s shell and caused defense to really leap upward. So both aspects had really been enhanced.
“All Zweite Resist Fire!” came the shout from the support troops at the back of the coalition army as they maintained magic to increase fire resistance at all times.
This should somewhat reduce the impact of the Phoenixes’ attacks and allow us to also concentrate on attacking.
“Itsuki!” I commanded.
“I know what to do. All Liberation Down!” Itsuki incanted his magic and debuffed the Phoenixes. Now we had all our buffs and debuffs in place.
Huh?
When the feathers dropped by the high-altitude Phoenix landed on the ground, monsters started appearing from those spots. They had the name “Phoenix familiar (vassal type)” and looked like a suit of armor. Just like the mural had shown. However, they also looked a bit tougher than the ones on the wall. There were wings sprouting from their armor and their entire bodies blazed with fire. The frontline, close-combat unit dashed forward to take out Phoenix familiars that had appeared.
Right!
“Raph!” I shouted, and Raph-chan and the other members of the Raph species started to knock away any Phoenix feathers that I was unable to stop on my own. Great. That was a big help!
“Kwaa!” Gaelion and Wyndia flew toward the high-altitude Phoenix.
“We’ve got this, Gaelion!” Wyndia shouted.
“Kwaa!” the dragon replied.
“I hereby draw out the power of Gaelion, desirous of it taking physical form. Dragon Vein, grant me your power!” Wyndia intoned.
“Kwaa, kwaa, kwaa!” was Gaelion’s addition.
“High Wing Slash!” At Wyndia’s shout, Gaelion’s wings started to glitter with light, and each flap of them caused blades of wind to slash forward.
Those blades jammed into the high-altitude Phoenix. It didn’t like that, giving an annoyed—maybe even surprised—shriek.
I needed to focus on the Phoenix right in front of me.
“Haaah!” I grabbed the Phoenix’s legs to create an opening, which Raphtalia, Fohl, and Atla made sure to exploit to the fullest.
“I’ve been training hard all for today! Now I’ll show you my improved, stronger technique!” Raphtalia sounded pleasingly confident. Her tail started to glow, just like the past Heavenly Emperor, and then she swept her sword down.
“Eight Trigrams Blade of Destiny Formation Two!” Her weapon sliced into the shoulder of the Phoenix.
Wow, Formation Two! It really looked much stronger than before. Now she would be even more reliable in battle!
“Tiger Break!” Fohl’s fist rammed into the Phoenix’s abdomen.
“Here I go!” Atla stabbed with her hand.
“Don’t forget about me! Gravity Sword!” Not wanting to be left behind, Ren also unleashed a skill, leaping onto the Phoenix and stabbing it multiple times in the head.
Wow. It was like slicing butter. Ren’s slashes looked to be causing some pretty serious trauma to the Phoenix.
“Okay! I’ll do what I can to help out. Woof!” With that, Keel chased in nimbly behind Ren and also started stabbing away. Keel was getting pretty strong too, from the look of things. This was a far cry from the danger she’d faced when that Spirit Tortoise familiar had defeated her.
I’d known everyone was getting stronger, but it was nice to see the evidence playing out before my eyes.
The Phoenix, however, had not only an animal part, like the Spirit Tortoise, but also seemed to comprise an elemental, spectral part. Each time it was injured, fire welled up from the wound and it vanished as though healed.
“Dammit! It’s got vitality in spades!” Ren complained. Even if a wound was cut, it quickly sealed back up, preventing a deeper injury from being caused.
This was really going to be a problem . . . but at least from the look of it, we were causing damage at the same time. Just as we had simulated, the low-altitude one was using an attack-focused suicide strategy, uncaring of whether it ended up blowing up or not.
However, we’d been prepared for whatever the Phoenix might unleash. So we weren’t taking much damage from both the breath and all the wing flapping. It was also very nice to seemingly not have to worry about the low-altitude one using anything as annoying as the Spirit Tortoise’s SP-absorbing attack.
However, we couldn’t be sure exactly what it might try to use on us. It might still have some attacks we hadn’t seen yet too.
As though on command, the Phoenix gave a high-pitched shriek and the halo on its back started to glow brighter.
“Woah!” I exclaimed. Pain flowed across my skin as though it were burning. The mural hadn’t shown anything like this! What was it? Some kind of special counter only used by the enhanced Phoenix? “Everyone, are you okay?” I checked.
“I’m fine!” Raphtalia confirmed.
“Me too!” Ren chimed in. It seemed that I’d taken the brunt of the attack, keeping it from affecting anyone else. Glad to hear it.
As I held onto the Phoenix to keep it from flying too high, I checked in on the high-altitude one. Motoyasu, Itsuki, Rishia, Sadeena and Shildina, and the queen were all launching their attacks toward it.
“Brionac!” Motoyasu threw a spear of light toward the Phoenix.
“Bird Hunting!” Itsuki’s arrow divided into multiple shafts, all striking the Phoenix at once.
“Tornado Arrow!” Rishia’s arrow created a tornado that held her target in place.
“Cooperative Magic! Image of Gale and Thunder Gods!” Sadeena shouted, while Shildina cast “Intense Collective Ritual Magic! Rain Storm!” The two sisters were leading the charge, striking with cooperative magic that combined lightning with tornadoes.
Just from a visual appraisal, it definitely looked like we were doing less damage to the high-altitude one than the one down here.
Then I had a thought. What were Filo and Motoyasu’s retinue of three doing? As soon as I pondered it, however, I also remembered. They were cooperating with the filolial unit and fighting over there with them. As well as Gaelion, other dragon knights and soldiers mounted on other flying monsters—I wanted to say griffons—were all fighting the good fight up there, but we were clearly doing too much damage to the low-altitude one.
At this rate, it wasn’t going to be easy to kill them both at the same time.
“Everyone, try and hold back a little, otherwise we’ll defeat this one first! We need to match up the timing as much as possible!”
“I know!” Ren returned.
“Okay!” Raphtalia managed. While keeping the front lines aware of the issue, I carefully maintained Air Strike Shield and Second Shield while keeping the low-altitude Phoenix pinned down.
“Ah?! Master Naofumi, the Phoenix is healing itself!” Atla warned me.
“Shit. That’s a pain,” I muttered. No way Atla would get that wrong. So if we backed off, it started healing. But if we went all-out, we’d definitely end up killing this one first.
It wasn’t going to be easy, but still we could handle it.
Just as I had that thought, I felt an increase in the temperature, spurring me to look at the Phoenix. In the same moment, it simply slipped out of my hand.
The Phoenix had gone and turned into pure fire.
“Everyone, get behind me! Air Strike Shield! Second Shield!” hurriedly shouted. Was this the attack from the cracked part of the wall that we hadn’t been able to clearly make out?
I placed my shield in front of me and stood ready.
With a shriek, the Phoenix came right at us—a spinning tornado of fire. It was like Filo’s Spiral Strike, It was an attack charging forward while surrounded in flames.
It wasn’t enough to penetrate my defenses, however.
“Everyone okay?” I asked. Perhaps because I took the charge from the low-altitude Phoenix head-on, no one behind me seemed to have taken any damage.
The rain of feathers and combat with the familiars was causing some damage to even the units not on the front line, but none of it was close to being critical.
Then I noticed something was wrong with me. My magic was being drained . . . and I had a bad feeling about what might come next.
The high-altitude Phoenix gave another piercing shriek.
“Shooting Star Shield!” I shouted.
Drawing in a breath, the high-altitude Phoenix then expelled it as a beam, almost like a red laser. The Shooting Star Shield barrier centered around me came up just in time before the beam hit.
With gasps of surprise, Gaelion and the others fighting the high-altitude Phoenix barely managed to get out of the way. Then this breath attack was unleashed upon the ground forces.
With terrible screams, part of an entire unit was blown away like toys.
Damn this fiery turkey! How many more annoying tricks did it have concealed in its feathers?
“It drained my magic! The attack the low-altitude one just used steals away magic from the enemies fighting on the ground and then the high-altitude one unleashes that powerful breath attack!” I explained. The two birds had made one big mistake, however.
The Spirit Tortoise Shell had C magic snatch on it.
Having finished defending the attack, my shield launched a magical missile directly at the low-altitude Phoenix. But with a fizzing sound, it vanished.
It was just further proof that I couldn’t counterattack for shit. It looked like gravity field didn’t work on the Phoenix either.
Then I heard the moans of the injured.
“Immediately provide healing for those who’ve been attacked. All Zweite Heal! If you die, the enemy will take control of you! Rear units, hurry and provide aid!” At the orders I barked, the rear support units rushed forward and started to aid those who had been on the receiving end of the breath attack.
The problem was the stinking absorb attack. It just had to have one of those. The Spirit Tortoise Shell couldn’t nullify MP absorption. The only thing to be happy about was—perhaps because of the Barbarian Armor having absorb resistance (medium)—my magic hadn’t fallen completely to zero. We also couldn’t rule out the existence of SP-absorbing attacks, which would be really nasty.
I could change to the Soul Eater Shield, which would nullify drain completely, but that would leave me with concerns about defense. It would probably still be able to handle whatever the Phoenixes dished out, but I also had the gut feeling that I’d only held out so long because of the Spirit Tortoise Shell.
There was no need to rely on the Shield of Wrath here . . . but it was still hard to know which approach to take. That had enhancements on it that really needed to be sealed away. Realizing how dangerous they were, I’d tried to change them but didn’t have the required abilities or level.
The Demon Dragon really had got the last laugh, leaving that little trinket behind.
Huh? The low-altitude Phoenix was healing even more damage. Dammit . . . did using that technique also speed up its healing powers?
I looked up at the high-altitude one.
That one seemed to be taking longer to heal, but it was still a really dangerous situation.
“Finish this off before it can heal!” I ordered. There were general shouts of agreement.
“I’ve got this!” Raphtalia also affirmed, and then the attack started again.
Everyone unleashed their most powerful attacks, visibly beating down the Phoenix. This made the fight with the Spirit Tortoise look like even more of a joke. A lengthy joke, at that. We wanted to be finished here in short order.
As for that one risky attack . . . if it wasn’t too dangerous, I’d just stick it out with the Soul Eater Shield.
I’d given orders to focus on casting magic for fire resistance.
Right. While still keeping the Phoenix locked down, I ate a rucolu fruit to recover my magic. Then I cast All Revolution Aura again, as the first one had run out.
Was there no way to cast a decisive final blow?
Then I had an idea.
“Gaelion!” I called.
“Kwaa?” the dragon answered.
“Take Ren with you and tackle the high-altitude Phoenix,” commanded.
“Naofumi, are you sure?” Ren asked.
“We’ve got enough firepower down here. I need you to focus your strength on weakening the higher one. If you think you’ve defeated it, direct your skill down here instead,” I told him.
“Sure thing,” he replied. At my orders, Gaelion and Wyndia dropped back down to me. I just hoped this would make things go a little easier.
The healing was a problem, but the high-altitude one just seemed like the tougher of the two. The low-altitude one healed quickly, but it also felt like it didn’t have much life.
Ren rode on Gaelion and went to fight the high-altitude one. It felt like that one was resistant to magic but weak to physical attacks. That had to be the case as it wasn’t really showing any effects from the full-scale magic of attackers like Sadeena, Shildina, and the queen.
That also suggested that the low-altitude one was weak to magic.
As though sensing my very thoughts, a Shadow appeared.
“Hero Iwatani, I have been told to azk you if maybe hitting the one you are fighting with ritual magic would maybe be more effective?” Shadow inquired.
“I was thinking the same thing! Everyone, get away from me! We’re gonna have some ritual magic coming in!” I shouted.
“What about you, Master Naofumi?!” Atla asked. At her question, I looked at Fohl.
“I can take it. Once the magic is finished, start attacking again,” I said.
“But—” Atla started.
“I’ll be fine. Hurry up and get away,” I said.
“Very well,” Raphtalia backed me up. “Atla, let’s go.”
“You’re always like this, aren’t you?” Fohl muttered, obviously not pleased about something. He and Raphtalia retreated with Atla.
Having confirmed that everyone had followed my orders and fallen back, the queen and Sadeena proceeded to launch ritual magic toward both the Phoenix and me.
A typhoon made of water descended from the sky toward me.
I could withstand it, using Shooting Star Shield. The Phoenix gave a pleasing shriek, however. The typhoon was an intense one, only lasting about thirty seconds, but it looked to have done some good damage.
A shame it wasn’t as strong as an attack from Ren, but it had probably done as much damage as a few successive attacks from Raphtalia or Fohl.
Just as I had suspected, the low-altitude one was weak to magic. It shrieked again, turning back into fire and charging right at me once more.
I switched to Soul Eater Shield and took it head-on. Certainly not the easiest attack to take with this approach—and this was with fire resistance magic applied. Just how powerful of an attack was it?!
Once the charge was over, I waited, shoulders heaving, for the healing magic to hit me.
I also checked whether the high-altitude one was going to unleash that powerful breath again . . . but no. It looked like if it was unable to steal any magic, it couldn’t use it.
Some sparks rained down, but nothing else happened.
It didn’t seem to have stopped the healing of the low-altitude Phoenix. That looked to be a separate issue.
Still, we could do this. If we pushed through, we could finish it. We just needed to weaken the high-altitude one some more, adjust the remaining life of them both, and we could win this.
“Come on! Let’s push on through and end this!” I declared. In that same moment—
From far behind us, far too far to see the source, a single shaft of light punched right through one of our targets—the weakened, almost ready-to-die high-altitude Phoenix.
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