tough guy

They attacked, obeying my command without a moment’s hesitation or concern. Rather inevitably, Vulturnus lead the pack, striking through me as a lance of luminous heat that threw me back. I hit the ground perhaps twenty meters down the street and rolled to my feet even as the asphalt shattered from below and dozens of earthy hands reached up to grab my face and limbs. Hooked claws of black stone scratched at me, searching for a hold in my clothes and skin alike even as they dragged me partially into the ground. At the same time a colossal pillar of stone rose from the ground and into the air above me before crashing down like a hammer. Lifting back up again, it smashed me further and further into the dirt with a series of strikes that shook the earth before being tossed away as Ereb expended much of his ‘budget’ and withdrew.

With barely a moment’s pause, Suryasta took over and the space around me erupted into flames. It grew large enough, hot enough, that in mere seconds it had melted a crater into the ground. Ereb played with that in turn, pulling the liquid earth up and over me as it tried to force me down and shut me in, holding me still while Suryasta tried to bake me. I held still, letting them work even as it left me feeling as though I were melting—but it wasn’t enough. I felt myself freeze in place as I cut off the power to my Adamant Skin and Bai Hu rose around me as I tore my way out of it, literally swimming through the viscous molten earth as I felt the heat beginning to die down.

I broke the surface after a moment, shaking myself like a dog to cast away some of the burning liquid, pausing as I heard earth and steel groan. Turning my head to the side, I saw the earth shift and metal rise as the combined efforts of Ereb and Crocea Mors raised pipes to the surface and burst steel. Immediately, water came flooding out with such speed that I felt it cut me even as I was thrown back. The water blaster stayed focused on my chest—or rather, on the vulnerable organs beneath—but the resulting spray pooled beneath me and flung itself at my face, surrounding my head in a vicelike bubble.

For a lot of people, that would have been enough of an attack—but my Elementals were more thorough than that. Though Xihai couldn’t simply overwhelm someone’s Aura and manipulate the fluids inside of them, there was a fair amount of leeway when it came to what counted as ‘inside.’ For instance, what of the nose and ears, the tear ducts and the mouth, and the other orifices of the human body? The flesh lining them was beyond her control, but were the empty openings and spaces?

No. At least, not completely—things didn’t count as part of the body just because they were in your mouth; you had to deliberately protect them. So she forced water into my eyes and ears, up my nose, and down my throat, enough to leave anyone else gagging and drowning. She pushed water in as far as she could go without losing control over it and then made them push against the sides of their respective paths until I felt like my head was about to pop. It didn’t naturally, however, so she changed tracks.

All at once, spikes and barbs erupted from every centimeter of the sphere that touched me. They drove into my neck and face and eyes, but also into deeper places, thousands of blades that grew inside my head. Xihai appeared before me then, figure clear even though the water should have distorted it. She reached a hand into the sphere, fingers pressing in far enough to touch my face—and then pulled back, dragging the sphere away with her, barbs and all. I choked for a moment, coughing and gagging even as I reflexively tried to draw in air.

There was none to be found. Levant stood nearby, expression as cheerful and unchanging as ever even as she kept the air away from my lips. I struggled for a moment in sheer reaction, the need to breathe making me fight until the Gamer’s Mind stepped in. Pausing for a moment to collect myself, I rose and stood, at once unbreathing and unbothered. I was above stuff like this now and I let her know so mentally, making her tilt her head to the side.

She shifted her focus to the air around me instead, tearing it away from a dozen hundred different points to create vacuums all around me. I felt pressure—more specifically, the differences in pressure—build and pull at my flesh, tearing me apart even as I healed myself again and again—

But I wasn’t satisfied. It wasn’t causing enough damage anymore, even though I’d turned off my Adamant Skin and allowed most of the attacks through my Aura. I’d fed them all tremendous amounts of power and they now turned that against me, but the damage was still far lower than I’d expected. Was it because my Physical and Magical Resistances were too high? I couldn’t control either, as they were passive effects and they’d have stacked with my other forms of damage resistance, including the Elemental ones. Even then, though…