Chapitre 97: 97. Final Boss (III)
Zane just had to survive. Survive and do what damage he could. He had to keep its attention on him so Evan could chip away in the background.
It turned out much harder than it sounded.
The bough erupted around him. He felt like a small boat caught in a vicious storm. Titansteel roots towered like tsunami waves.
Then a root reared out of the ground and snagged his arm whip-quick. Another caught his leg; another wrapped his waist, coiling like a python. He slashed at them, but he could hardly force his axehead past that shiny skin.
A top World Ranker couldn't break this—he saw why now. It had the power of Elemental steel. Only Stormfire could stand up to it, and even then it was rough going. The root held stubborn.
In a blink another root snatched up his last free arm. Then all of it yanked with a monstrous strength. The Treant's fury washed over him. It was trying to force him to his knees.
He roared. He set his body on Stormfire. Everything. He shoved in as much essence as he could bear; he willed it to go as hot as it could. He'd burn his way out if he had to. It took a huge effort but he ripped an arm free—Stormfire loosened the hold. Brute strength did the rest. He got an Axe back. Then he just started slashing.
Rising Storm Slashes blitzed through the air, one after another. An intense heat bloomed at the middle of that grotesque tangle; red-white lines carved through the air, crisscrossing, cackling. Soon he'd freed his legs. The roots kept trying to wrap him up but he beat them back, kept slashing fast as he could, as furiously as he could. It felt like trying to cut his way through a forest with a blunt knife.
It took nine or ten full-power Rising Storm Slashes to get through it all. By the end of it, he stood in a blackened smoking crater.
Then he felt something immense over his head and looked up. He felt the gravity of it before he saw it. Stars brought low to earth, hovering there, spinning, warping the air around them…
Shit.
This was that Legendary Skill. Ironfall. What the Treant been setting up all along. The thing that had one-shot the World Rank #12. It fell so hard, so blistering fast, he knew he couldn't react in time.
So he didn't react. He used Sage Mind.
He took in each of those five seething meteors bearing down over him. He held each of them in his mind, held the Monster's will in his mind, held all their shifting trajectories at once…
Then they blasted at him.
He had a split-second to react. Volt Step!
He skidded out of the way and heard the air screaming behind him. An explosion rocked the bough. The rest were already on him. He leaped out of the way of another, heard a great shattering off to the left—but things were changing. The Treant was learning. It was tracking him as he ran. He clawed the ground hard, lurched to a halt—a meteor raged past him, sinking a yawning ditch into the steel. The impact threw his grips from the ground. Essence blasted him in the face. It was just recoil and it still hurt.
No time. He had to Volt Step again. He felt a huge glut of power streak toward him; he wrenched hard left—too late. It was already falling; it was going to hit him. He couldn't get out of the way in time. Shit.
A desperate try—he sank his Axe into the ground as he leaped. He used Steely Density to make his body as light as he could. He had to roll with the blow; he braced for it.
Then it struck.
He heard a sickening chorus of cracks. His body compressed so fast he thought he might pop like a blood balloon.
He went flying. The essence gored into him. It didn't even hit him clean, and still—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%!
He hit the end of his Chain, snagged there, and went flying in a sorry semi-circle. And then he was mid-air, halfway through the loop, face-to-face with the last meteor. It was still there, hovering, gleaming. Waiting. He felt the Treant's cruel intent locking on him.
Fuck.
He yanked on his Chain hard, trying to get out of the way. He almost managed it too.
Then meteor ran through him.
It jarred him so hard he didn't even register slamming into the bough. Crashing into hard steel felt like a caress in comparison. It felt like every bone in his body had shattered. Everything hurt. Foreign essence, foreign Law lay heavy in his body, swamping him, crushing him. Even Stormfire had trouble burning it all out.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟝𝟘%!
𝕊𝕒𝕧𝕒𝕘𝕖 𝔹𝕠𝕕𝕪 𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕕!
𝕍𝕚𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝟚𝟝
𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕘𝕥𝕙 𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝟚𝟝%
𝕊𝕡𝕖𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖𝕕 𝟚𝟝%
He had to get up. His body screamed bloody protest, but he forced himself to his feet. If he was down, there was nothing protecting Evan. He hurt like hell. But he could still fight. He smiled; he tasted his own hot salty blood.
The Treant was recharging. Its trunks were spluttering, a little dim. Roots were still sprouting all over the place, but there'd be a little break before it could rain hell on him again.
Through blurry eyes, Zane saw Evan had managed to carve a gold line through half a tree. A little less than he hoped… Zane wasn't sure he could take another one of those Ironfalls. He was lucky none of those meteors hit him head-on. Even with that last one, he'd partly got out of the way. He got clipped, not crushed.
That Marquis took one to the face. And was annihilated. He was pretty sure he was stronger than that Marquis. But something about those meteors… he didn't trust anything without an Elemental Law to take many of those head-on.
He just had to make sure they didn't hit him square. He licked his lips. He could do that.
***
Those root-vines were on him again almost instantly. They gave him no room to breathe. The difference between Level 99 and 100 just kept surprising him—was it just the Elemental Law making this Boss so much stronger? It powered every technique. Like using jet fuel instead of normal gas or something. It was absurd.
Zane just kept slashing, burning himself out. Every move hurt. He was pretty broken, but he had long figured out the difference between broken and broken broken. The first kind was pretty bad. But you could still keep going for a while if you just bit down and ignored all the flaring, biting pain.
The Treant frowned at him, growling that echoing cavernous growl. He spit out a mouthful of blood and grinned at it. Bring it! That gold line on its trunk was only getting longer and longer…
Wait.
When he reached out to it, he felt a dark undercurrent. He couldn't read thoughts, just feelings, intent—so it took him a moment to catch on.
When he did, his heart sank.
Most of its attention was still on snaring him. But its focus was shifting back. Back to Evan.
It kept throwing up all these roots up front, but it was trying to trick him—trick both of them—into thinking it only wanted him.
But it was looking at Evan on the other side. Evan, whose face curled up in concentration, sweating, standing still, slicing as hard as he could. The ground around him started to bubble...
Zane roared. He threw everything he had into a Rising Storm Slash. A desperate try to get its attention. It didn't work. The Treant just ate the shot. One of its trees was now teetering so badly it almost keeled over—it didn't matter. He felt its vicious joy; it got what it wanted.
The other half of the bough—Evan's half—erupted with roots. They blanketed everything. Evan cried out, tried getting out of the way, but there was nowhere to go. They caught him by the arms, by the legs, by the throat—
Zane was already Volt Blitzing across. Throwing wild slashes, making his body a burning battering ram. He blasted his way straight through, landed at Evan's side in the heart of the thicket. He poured everything into Rising Storm Slashes—once, twice, three times, cut the boy free, wrenched him out of the way.
Evan gasped; he choked in air as the roots slipped off his throat. He just felt pure joy. "Zane!" he cried, beaming—he wasn't even shocked. Evan had just... believed. The way a boy believes in a superhero. Somehow he knew since he was in trouble, Zane would save him. He had so much faith in Zane it was baffling.
But he was celebrating too early.
The roots were all over Zane now. Snagging up his legs, his arms—when he tried to get at them, they wrapped up Evan too. The boy gave a little cry. Now they were both stuck.
The Treant gave an ear-splitting screech, a screech of triumph. And Zane felt the Ironfall heaving above him, quickly forming. There was no time. He couldn't free Evan and also himself. He had to make a choice.
He strained against that great mass of steel, struggling to drag him down. He defied it. He forced out two huge Rising Storm Slashes, ripped through a knot of steel roots. Then he grabbed Evan out of the mess.
He threw the boy hard, hoping against hope. It was the last thing he managed before they dragged him under.
By now he knew there was no getting out. There were so many root-vines coiling around every one of his limbs he wasn't getting free—not in time. He was too late. He'd just burned all the time he had left.
The Ironfall hung over him fully made. Three huge globes of steel, surging pure dense essence. This close it was impossible to breathe. There was so much essence seething off them it was like looking at three blazing suns.
…Fuck.
Then they fell on him. All at once.
With the last of his strength, he forced his broken arm to move, forced it to strain against six python roots. Forced all of his essence into one last defiant Rising Storm Slash. He gave it all he had.
It might've been the most Rising Storm Slash he'd ever thrown. It carved a wicked, shining, curving, beautiful red-white scar on the first meteor. It looked like he was carving a crescent moon on a full moon. The sheer force of it sent the meteor careening out of the way.
That took out one. The problem was two more were still falling. And he was still strapped down like a prisoner on death's row. There was just no time.
He'd barely started his second Rising Storm Slash when the second meteor hit him.
Then he was on the ground again. He was in so much pain it was all he felt. No touch, no sound, no smell—just a blinding, brilliant pain.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟚𝟝%!
That just wrecked a third of his Health. It felt like it did more. He had to get up—he was lucky just to live through this one. He wasn't surviving a third. He raged at his legs, tried forcing them up, but all they gave him was more pain.
It seemed most of him was broken.
He didn't care. He built up to an arm. He heard roots snapping as they tried to keep him down. But he wouldn't go quietly; his blood still ran hot. He'd keep thrashing. If it wanted to kill him, he'd make it earn every bit of it. He kept smiling through it all, a bloody, toothless smile. He had to get up—
He heard a scream—was that Evan? So the boy had made it out after all.
The last thing he felt was relief.
Then the meteor struck. And crushed him.
There was a tremendous shattering.
Then everything went still.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone