The Territory Boss Pt5

Separating from our collision as the world spins wildly around me, I lose the ability to tell up from down for a short moment before realizing that I was heading down to the ground while casting First-Aid.

Even though their flight ability had less limitations than my wings, Lich Lord Trollbone was sinking feet first through the air in time with me. Their sword was held point down in front of them with his bony hands both resting together on the pommel. It honestly looked like they were standing at their leisure despite falling at the same speed as I.

As I watched, one percent of health ticked into their bar with every passing second. They showed no signs of giving in to my demands and even looked like he was enjoying himself! Gritting my teeth behind the weightless mask over my already masked helmet, I spread out my wings to catch myself and right myself in midair.

Stopping in perfect time with me, the lich lord does not even properly wield its sword as I make a move but simply raises it up. Blocking a wild swing from Hauntings, he simply lets his sword spin up and around between his hands to get a proper grip in both hands. Then, as I was casting a Slash Geist to make space, he lashed out directly at my sword.

Slash was canceled out immediately and the Geist that followed shot forth from the contact point, completely missing my target and leaving me open to a savage returning slash across my body. I barely had time to tuck my arms in while raising my wings, taking the blade across my left forearm and upper arm and using his own tactic of riding out the strike.

Flapping my wings at a hopeful angle while spinning back around, I rise several feet up and over while casting a 360 Geist. My blade rakes through the darkness surrounding them and across their head and shoulders, not only scoring a critical hit but also releasing two sets of wraith blades that pass through Trollbone's body and sends him careening wildly toward the ground.

For about ten feet before he seems to automatically stop and right himself. His health was only just nearing a two-hundred-percent loss despite the steady regeneration and I finally had time to not only cast First-Aid on myself but also retrieve a cold signature sandwich from a belt pocket. Just as I was taking a bite and repairing my damaged defenses, the lich lord struck.

Just as I hoped.

Not even bothering to put away the sandwich, I cast a 360 Edge to parry away the high-speed sword thrust sailing toward me before using desperate measures. I leaned backward into a one-handed Flying Geist Guillotine that flips me backwards to an underhanded chop of my sword up between their legs.

Did I really think I would score a critical hit to a skeleton's crotch? No. Did I somehow manage to score a critical hit on a skeleton's crotch? Yes!

Not only did I inflict over ten percent of damage with the initial strike but the skeleton was immediately thrown into a wildly spinning back flip before the knockback of half a dozen Geists even took effect. When they did, Trollbone quickly found himself crazily flipping around twenty feet up into the air. A little Corruption later, I had managed to both eat the sandwich through my helmet and finish repairing my defenses.

With renewed health and mana and a boost to my regeneration rates, I shot up through the air to meet them as they finally stopped flipping through the air.

Stopping my flight by stretching my wings and maintaining my height with much slower, almost undulating, flaps of my new wings, I find myself eye level with the currently twelve-plus feet tall undead troll monster. Suddenly, I seemed to have a much better view of the entire world. "Take it back," I say softly despite not having to worry about anybody hearing us.

"Oh?" He seems to ask with humored curiosity. "Is that still upsetting you, little one? Come now, death stands before you, now is the time when mortals should be willing to let things go."

"Six," I say flatly with a deathly serious voice.

"Six?" Trollbone parrots in confusion, actually tilting his head a bit to the side.

"I have met six incarnates of death itself," I explain in the same seriousness. "One of them was even what most worlds would call a dark or evil god. All of them are dead, now. Take it back."

"I can see your soul, boy, you're not even an adult in this world," Trollbone counters while standing with his sword casually in one hand. Despite the look of leisure, I could not perceive or premeditate a single opening in his 'stance'. "Do better."

Narrowing my gaze, I quickly self-enchant a thousand mana worth of lightning element and cast out a small discharge of St. Elmo's Fire. As soon as the electric attack struck, I struck, following the path of the discharge to recreate a short-distance Flash Step with a touch of telekinetic alchemy. "360 Elemental Geist," I say softly as soon as I appeared, instantly spinning into a massive discharge of myriad energy explosions from dozens of wraith blades with a default value of three hundred mana.

For the first times, Lich Lord Trollbone's health dropped by more than a fifty percent and the knockback sent him flying straight down almost a hundred feet through the air to crash down into the ground before with a smaller crater around his body. Rolling and flapping into a swift dive, I gather and condense an immense mass of air and fire element into my hand with roughly a gallon of Splash.

Clenching a fist enlarged by its numerous layers of defenses into the basketball-sized mass of condensed magic, I ram it home in a Superman punch right into the risen lich lord's head. The magical and 'chemical' explosion that followed was so strong that I was sent flying away because of the position of my wings. I found myself taking a turn performing several wild flips up and backward through the air.

Trollbone was thankfully back on the ground but his health bar looked like it had not even lost five percent of its overall filling. Taking the time to look around, I realize that we had 'landed' on the opposite side of the giant pit from the others who had long since formed a single mass and gathered near the edge of the pit to track the fight.

"Since when did you have the leisure to look away?" Snapping to attention, I find the lich lord levitating only a few feet away with his giant fist growing in my field of view. I barely had time to swear in my head while turning my face and angling my wings before the fist made contact and sent me spinning down to the ground.

Luckily, a trail of arcing bolts was left in my wake so all I had to do was flap once and backtrack along the electrical current before appearing into a basic 360 Edge while simply channeling more electric mana. Even though Trollbone had adapted to and predicted this attack, he and his sword were still pushed back while lightning arced about his sword and body.

"360 Edge! 360 Edge! 360 Edge!"

Again and again I call out my strike with every flash, channeling myself along the constant bursts of lightning to chain together until I had a full combo of five skill strikes. The first 360 Edge was somehow blocked while the sword was returning to a defensive position, but each consecutive skill following this struck home after the sword was all but cast aside.

Once I had secured a completely buffed combo streak, I switched gears and unleashed all of my mana in the form of another lightning beam guided through my sword. The attack once again canceled out my self-enchantment, but this was the cost of a super-conduction perk I had discovered after dealing with the last clan.

Coupled with a twelve-point-five percent boost from the special edition of Perfect Combo, the shortly sustained beam of concentrated electric mana tore away a new fifty-percent chunk of health while slamming the lich lord back down.

Unable to following the lightning's path without the Self-Enchantment I could only dive the old fashioned way to land outside of the crater while Trollbone was still rising up to his feet from on his back like a ghoul rising from the grave. "Take it back," I once again demand, taking up the same Sir Beryl pose he had used earlier while standing over him.

He did not even respond this time, flashing into action to appear in front of me while thrusting his sword into my body. Since my body's defenses were in prime condition for once, the sword only managed to punch a few inches into my stomach before pushing me away and free at the end of the thrust. I even only lost thirty percent of my health.

Regeneration half of the damage while catching my balance, I empty out the few hundred mana I had regenerated since the electric beam in an enlarged Spirit Wave. The lich lord lashed out at the visually immense attack with a dark wave of his own, canceling out both attacks at once when cutting energy met blunt force.

Rushing in behind the blurred and shining energy as both attacks shattered or dispersed, I lash out with a raw punch filled with a new fifty mana's worth of points in Force Strike. My fist connected with the end of a chin that had a larger area than my own head and laid the skeleton almost flat out in the air before they snapped up with a stomping kick of their own.

That kick planted the giant heel of Trollbone's foot square in the middle of my chest and sent me flying dozens of yards straight back through the air and back over the pit. Angling my wings with only a slight spread to stop my wild flight, I open my wings sharply to throw myself downward as the lich lord appears in the air. Like always, lording over me.

From such a position, it was now only too easy to evade the incoming slash even though it came from below in an underhand stroke. Flapping my wings to fly straight up behind the rising sword with Hauntings gripper below me in both hands, I drag my own giant sword up along Trollbone's ribs before casting Flying Guillotine halfway through. The original basic attack was now stacked by the heavy hitting damage and knockback of my assassination skill.

Because I was already in the process of an underhand sword stroke, the skill enacted a back flip that sent Lich Lord Trollbone flying up into the air once again. Flying after and around him as he flips twice more than twenty feet in the air, I attack with a 360 Geist as soon as he came to a stop. The lich lord was once again sent flying through the air.

This time, though, he was finally sent flying straight back the way I usually would after one of his attacks.

Chasing him down with Haunting out and at the ready, I perform a 360 Edge that the giant skeleton somehow manages to block even though he had just come to a stop. However, he was still shoved back just far enough to use Flying Guillotine to cover the distance. This attack found its mark right on Trollbone's sternum in a downward chopping motion.

Sixteen percent of health went missing from his health bar as he was through down and backward through the air. "Take! It! Back!" Every word came with emphasis this time in the form of a chain of Flying Guillotines and 360 Edge to traverse upward or downward and always forward through the air while raining vengeance down on the raid boss.

When we finally came to a stop after continuing the assault in silence it was nearly all of the way back across the pit. Despite my expectations, the others had already made it half of the way around to the other side by the time I managed to ground the lich lord once again. However, after so many specialty skills and mana depletion I was finally feeling the fight in full.

Standing on the ground once again, my breathing seemed to catch up with my actions and slowly became soft, exhausted wheezes. Hauntings suddenly felt twice as heavy in my hands and my body ever so slightly lowered in stance of its own volition. However, I had managed to drain seven hundred percent from this broken bastard and still had some fight left.

Standing just outside the reach of his own weapon, the lich lord was calmly standing there waiting as if he had all of the time in the world. I was really starting to hate this guy. I rarely felt personal when fighting mobs and this guy had somehow managed to find my ultimate trigger already, but the outstanding health bar of his was pissing me off!

Who the hell designs a boss like this?! Normal people would have to fight for an hour in shifts of one hundred to take this guy out faster than me! I was even literally ARMORED in his weakness!

Just as I was thinking about trying some banter in a bid for time, Trollbone struck. Flashing forward in another thrust, he stabs his sword into me only a couple of inches away from the previous wounds. A chunk of my layered defenses suddenly fell away between the openings, allowing to sword to almost reach my back this time.

Even though my health had refilled once again from the food regen I soon found myself down to half-life all over again. This time I was not thrown from the sword but stuck on it instead, allowing the lich lord to reel me in and then stomp down into the ground. The world around me cratered over my head in depth from the simply attack and I quickly found myself in critical condition before I could even attempt First-Aid.

However, I got the cast off as soon as the attack was over and pulled myself into functionality. Stepping down on the inside of my bodily crater, I Quick Step off to the side before leaping backward into a 360 Edge. As I hoped, Trollbone was flashing over only to be caught blind in the attack and thrown twice as far forward as he intended to go.

Following up with another bid for time, I take a leaf out of the dearly departed commander's book and unleash a combined field skill of ice and stone. Unlike the commander's attack that looked pretty from above with a helix of skills, mine was simply a straight combined line of both elements. However, it caught Trollbone unaware with a ten-foot wall of ice spikes and rubbled rock and started pushing him straight back for a few dozen yards.

Swiftly opening my corrupted armor and removing a ring from my left hand, I replace it with a ring from a pocket in my belt before resetting my armor and defenses. Using my new Flash Step ring to all but teleport beside Trollbone, I hop up into a 360 Geist that slams across their unprepared chest with a flurry of wraith blades to fly another dozen yards.

Another Quick Step later and I was in range of a Flying Guillotine while childishly yelling, "Take it back!"

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