Geyser Fight [3]

I turned my attention to the four mages, all of whom were looking very worried. The biggest weakness of a mage was how stationary they usually were. They were not accustomed to close combat scuffles, as they were more used to fighting from a distance. These mages were also members of the Alorae race, which meant that they were probably more cowardly and backstabbing than most. I was assuming some form of betrayal would take place, which inevitably happened.

As soon as I drew close to the mages, one of them whipped out a scroll and slapped it on the back of another mage. That mage screamed in pain as their body contorted and twisted into the form of an emberbeard behemoth, one of the larger monsters in the Verdant Abyss.

The emberbeard behemoth looks just as its name implies. It was a monster that looked very much like a mammoth, except for a few differences. It was covered in red fur, had six tusks with three on each side, a shorter trunk, and stood on its hind legs as a bipedal creature. On the chin of the emberbeard behemoth was a burning flame, which only went out when it died. It somewhat reminded me of Charizard from Pokémon, except it was bigger, meaner, and looked more like an elephant than a dragon.

That means the mage had expended a polymorph scroll. Those scrolls are rare and very powerful if you get the right monster attached to them. An emberbeard behemoth wasn't a problem for me, but I would admit that it had a sizable amount of vitality, enough so that it would slow me down. It was by far more effective than throwing a few more swordsmen or spearmen at me.

One problem with the polymorph scroll, or the polymorph spell in general, was that the one affected by it would assume the intelligence of whatever creature it was polymorphed into. They would still recognize friend and foe, but a lot of their reasoning turned into instinct. The mage, who had turned into the emberbeard behemoth, immediately started to charge at me. It was now instinctually obliged to kill its enemies, myself included.

The behemoth swung down at me with a meaty fist, but I dodged to the left, easily avoiding the blow. The debuff that reduced my weapon energy by a full tier had finally ended, so I channeled advanced-tier sword energy into Versaga. I proceeded to run up the monster's arm, like I was in Attack on Titan, to go for the back of its neck with a single swing.

The behemoth turned its head towards me and spat fire in a cone down at its own arm. It was resistant to a fire, so it wouldn't hurt it, but I lacked such resistance. I decided to take the full brunt of the breath weapon so that I could move on to the mages as soon as possible. Thanks to my natural armor, the damage was reduced to medium, so I wasn't gravely injured. I got past the behemoth's arm and made a swing for the back of its neck as soon as I reached its shoulder.

As soon as I made my swing, the behemoth glowed with a faint, light blue aura, and my attack was negated. The aura dissipated violently as it clashed with my advanced-tier sword energy. One of those fucking mages that had been casting all these support buffs was definitely going to get it. The recoil from the violent clash between my attack and the aura threw me off the shoulder of the behemoth and onto the ground. I rolled to the side as the behemoth tried to stomp on my chest.

I looked in the direction where the mages were running to try and figure out which of the three mages was casting the shield spell. All three of them should be very low on spellcasting resources by this point, but things have dragged on far too long, and I still do not know where Gillion is. Using telekinesis, I lifted myself upright and kept my eyes trained on the three mages as I made another advanced-tier sword strike at the behemoth.

The attack was sloppy and not meant to hurt or kill the behemoth, as my concentration was trained on the three mages so I could determine which one was specialized in shields. I noticed the mage on the far right extend their hand towards the behemoth as soon as my sword strike clashed against a fresh magical shield.

"There's the little fucker!"

A geyser had erupted vertically near the mage on the right. Using telekinesis, I angled the geyser to shoot horizontally at him. My telekinesis wasn't strong enough to perfectly redirect the geyser so it could deal a lethal blow towards him, but it was enough to shoot him with water that was strong enough to knock him on his ass. Using this opportunity, I concentrated short energy into a single thrust at the emberbeard behemoth's head.

The concentrated energy was enough to pierce its skull, but not enough to kill it, surprisingly. The behemoth was disoriented and fell on its side. It tried to roll up, but a convenient geyser shot a sharp concentration of water diagonally into the behemoth's side, finishing the job for me. After I confirmed that the behemoth had died, I turned to give the three remaining mages my full attention. It was at this moment that I received some troubling notifications.

Notification

User energy is at critically low levels.

Notification

Danger! The user is at risk of energy exhaustion.

I did not have to use sword energy to protect my body for most of this fight, so the energy was being used efficiently. Even so, I should have been more careful during this fight. Perhaps using the last stand skill was inevitable, but I could not use it before Gillion made an appearance. I don't think that the Alorae are aware of my last stand ability just yet, as none of them have survived to tell of it. Being in this critical state where my energy is almost depleted should be enough bait to lure out Gillion.

The mages didn't get very far, mostly because they had to be very cautious while traversing the death geysers. Thanks to how familiar I was with this location, catching up to them wasn't any problem at all. By the time I reached them, I heard the loud, painful cries of two swordsmen being consumed by Tim. The fight has been going well so far.