16 The Menacing Anya of Solitude

"Wait up you damn idiot!" Aegis chased after me.

Dead ahead of me, Anya opened her eyelids to reveal her green, glowing, iris less eyes.

"So you humans defeat me once and send more of your kind to mock my defeat? I'm not some beast to be hunted for fun!" Anya raised and extended her arm to me.

The tree behind her has a branch that was coming at me at immense speeds. I paid no mind to the branch because it didn't seem it was going to do any damage. I'll just dodge it if it becomes an issue.

Turns out, the branch immediately became an issue. The branch instantly grew to the size of a tree trunk, but was still coming at me with the speed of a branch.

CRASH

Before the tree trunk could hit me, it crashed into the air close to me and broke into multiple pieces. I glanced behind me to see that Aegis used his Shapios to shield me from that. I briefly thanked him and prepared to my advance.

"When she gets in her titan form, her weakness will be her heels and back. Target that with Samantha." Aegis ordered me.

"If you tell me what to do, I'll kill you."

"That's an empty bluff. I know you care."

"HA! Yeah right! Deathly Lunge!"

I noticed Samantha circIe around to the back of the tree as I jumped to quickly close the distance. In retaliation, Anya jumped backwards into the tree and was absorbed into it. I couldn't make it to her to damage her actual body. I ended up just hitting the trunk of the tree as it grew to a colossal mass.

"Woah!" I hung onto my axe that was wedged deep into what used to be the trunk of the tree.

Once it finished growing, I looked to find that my axe was in the chest of a gigantic wood golem with pits as eyes that glowed green. I'm in big trouble. I'm certain that fall damage kills and I'm high enough to warrant death in real life. It's head looked down at me and I tried to pry the axe out of its chest quicker. As I tried, it began to move one of its hands to its chest to smack me like a mosquito.

"GAZE OF PITY!" I faintly heard Aegis shout as the wood golem was going to squish me. It immediately switched it's attack path from me to Aegis. Aegis presented his watch to the golem and suspended its attack in the air with a resounding block.

CRASH

Various splinters and tree bark go flying.

"MATTHEW! UNEQUIP AND EQUIP YOUR AXE!" Aegis shouted to me.

I get exactly where he's going with this. I opened my menu and unequipped my axe. As the axe disappeared from its spot and I went plummeting towards the ground of the domain, I reequipped it. Once I did, I began my counterattack.

"DEATHLY LUNGE!"

I quickly redirected myself and leaped for the golem's heel. I made contact with its foot as I ripped through its heel and spun clockwise to help stop my momentum as I landed. It only took a couple of uses of deathly lunge for me to learn it. If I had to fully describe it, the skill gives a tingling feeling in your legs for a brief moment. In that moment, any jump or attempt of a jump one makes will become amplified at least tenfold. If used in the air, an futile attempt to kick myself in a favorable landing position can easily turn into a counterattack.

I wasted no time and began chopping away at the heels of the golem with Samantha. Jessica even got in on some of the action. Occasionally, she would need to switch with Aegis since he could only defend for so long with Shapios. With all three of us hitting the general, the healers healing and buffing us, and the tanks alternating taking the damage, we were shaving away Anya's health quite easily.

As we were working on Anya, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed patches of grass begin to grow and take shape to form mini wood golems. They were the size of the average human and had the general appearance of one. They only differences was the skin that was made of wood and the featureless body.

The mini wood golems made their way to our healers. Violet was chanting spell after spell and Gabe was singing the lyrics of one of his songs. He immediately stopped to cry for help as the mini wood golems bolted for him.

"Hans army! I need your help!"

"Hans army...do you really call your fans that?" Violet tried to mask the disgust on her face.

Aegis was temporarily swapped out with Jessica and was helping us with damage. I didn't even need the green light from him. I dashed over to help Violet and Gabe. I then noticed that Samantha was right behind me. Shouldn't she be helping with DPS?

"WAIT! NOT BOTH OF YOU GUYS!" Aegis yelled out to us.

I guess that answers that question. It doesn't really matter all that much, does it? If anything, now's a better time than ever to see what she's got.

I ran past all of the forming wood golems and left them to Samantha. The goal was to get to the healers as quick as possible. I could visibly see her get angry as she hacked away at them. I made it to the healers and did my best to defend them the only way I knew how: Offense.

"UNDEAD'S BECKON!"

I screamed out to the wood golems in the area and they all aggroed to me. One by one, they ran to me to get chopped down. Some of them took more effort than others, but it was smooth sailing regardless. Once I cleared the area, I began to notice in the distance that more wood golems were sprouting. They weren't just growing from nothing, they were growing from the grass in the area. I looked around my healers and was able to confirm because of the lack of grass around them.

I don't think any of us have any skills that can burn all of the grass in the domain, so I'm just gonna have to do things the hard way.

"I'll just have to cut them down before they get to grow into golems!" I was grinning from ear to ear.

"You're really enjoying this..." Violet mentioned.

"THIS IS MY BREAD AND BUTTER, VIOLET!" I dashed once again over to fields of grass that was birthing wood golems.

As I was running, I saw that Samantha was able to take care of the golems in her area. Her HP was a bit low, but it's not anything that the healers couldn't fix. I looked over to the tanks that were chipping away at Anya, but to barely any success. That's to be expected. Neither DPS is focusing on the boss, so the damage it's receiving has dropped exponentially. I could see that Aegis was getting visibly more and more angry at the fact that we left him, so I quickly dispatched of the mini golems in my area and ran back to Anya to do more damage. Samantha we'll just have to take care of the rest.

After a while of fighting, there was no life left in the domain other than Anya, and everyone that was fighting against her, including me. We managed to shave off a third of her HP before she began her second phase. She began to fall over and go into a fetal position. If I didn't know any better I would assume that she was trying to surrender.

"EVERYONE GET BEHIND ME!" Aegis yelled out.

Everyone listened as we all filed behind him. Everyone except for Jessica. Anya began her second phase by ballooning the golem she was inside to a fourth of the domain. Once it got to its abnormal size, it exploded into thousands of splinters of wood that went flying all across the domain. A large portion of those splinters ended up hitting Jessica. As she was getting hit, Violet and Gabe rapidly casted healing skills to keep her up.

This continued until Anya's main body was visible to us and she had no more of her wood golem to shoot splinters from.

"GRAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Anya let out a scream as she charged us.

"Jessica, you're up!" Aegis told the Repeller.

"Got it!" Jessica ran to intercept Anya midway through her charge.

That's when I noticed Jessica's brightly glowing gem on her chest. She prepared a swing of her fist, gritted her teeth, and shouted at the top of her lungs "PISTOL WHIP!"

Her fist moved faster than I could possibly see as steam surrounded it and drove itself into Anya's stomach. Anya fell a bit forward as she recoiled in response to the gut-turning punch.

"Pistol Whip: it's a special move that Repellers get at level ten. It allows them to use all the stored up energy in their crystal and release it all in one quick flash of steam. It's a stun that also deals massive damage. With this, we'll be able to get through most of the second phase with ease."

"I-I knew that..." I snapped at him. Couldn't let him know I was out of the loop.

"No you didn't."

I ignored him and went charging to Anya with everyone else. We surrounded her and each took hits off of her as she was stunned. Even when she broke out of the stun, we were able to maneuver away from her attacks since she was weakened. This is her final stage after all.

Everything was going smoothly until she was ten percent of her HP...

She fell to her knees and prostrated herself before us. Everyone held their punches back for a moment because of the brief humanity the demon general was showing. That's when Anya did something that not even Aegis could predict.

"MONSTERS OF THE FOREST! I, ANYA OF SOLITUTDE HAVE LEARNED MY LESSON! IN ORDER TO FIGHT, I NEED YOU! PLEASE LEND ME YOUR STRENGTH-" Anya screamed into the air as I tried to use my vital puncture to stop her. However, I was too late.

Not soon after, I heard a large rumbling in the distance. I looked outside of the domain to see hordes of monsters of all levels stampeding into the domain. Goblins, wolves, slimes, orcs, every monster from the easiest in the frontier to the level ten monsters were gathered here to rescue the demon general. Since she was so low, we tried to attack her, but she gathered every splinter she possibly could and used it to surf away into the horde of oncoming monsters.

"I thought once we step in the domain, nothing can get in or out!" I said to Aegis.

"It looks like this is a unique encounter with the demon general. Because of that, the monsters of the frontier are able to cross the domain and help for this final bit. You should be happy. If we survive this, we get a yellow item."

"If? I don't know about you, but I don't plan on dying here. It would be pretty lame if I died in a general battle in the first frontier. Maybe frontier six or seven, but here is too early."

"I like that energy. Try to keep it up for this last bit."

"This is a lot of monsters though..." Violet mentioned.

"Don't worry. The Hans army has your back! You can thank me by joining!" Gabe told Violet.

"No thank you..."

As the countless hordes of monsters surrounded us at all sides, we huddled together with our backs facing each other. This battle is definitely not going to get any easier.

And I'm enjoying every moment of it!