And his ability wasn’t limited solely to his feet, it seemed. He also used his hands to catch hold of the air or to push off of it, especially as a means of dodging or redirecting himself, allowing for precise corrections to his shooting angle. Sometimes he wedged his glaive against nothing and then caught the pole loosely, using it to redirect himself in a hairpin turn without losing much speed. Other times he struck the glaive in at an angle and then jumped up to kick off of it, using the flex of the weapon to gain even more height in a vault. When he did physically connect in a glaive strike against the monster, he also used these impacts as a way to gain height and power, bringing the weapon around multiple times in quick succession to deliver rapid blows.
His ability to jump farther and farther into the air through these direct, linear strikes allowed him to fight much more strategically than he would have been able to do if he had remained grounded. He thought in three dimensions, planned in three dimensions, and acted in three dimensions. He was constantly gaining altitude to get a better firing angle for shooting, and he reacted to threats fluidly, weaving his way around attacks.
If Aelfric used Airstep for traversal, then he used Shadowstep for power projection, moving into one shadow from another to both dodge attacks and to spring unexpected ones. It was midday, meaning most of the shadows were at their shortest, but Aelfric made use of every inch of them, using them to essentially teleport around the area.
It was breathtaking to watch him fight, long gun in one hand as if it were a pistol, and the other hand thrown out, moving through a complex spell, or striking or blocking with his glaive. Each time he emptied one of his guns, he dropped it, moving on to the next. The emptied guns disappeared after he dropped them, and he called up new ones, as if drawing them from the shadow of his cloak.
Aelfric didn’t seem to actually fire the bullets he had loaded into the glaive, at least not in a strictly orthodox sense. Instead, he used them to trigger effects on the blade of the glaive, and to generate bursts of exceptional power when he was sure to connect.
His glaive followed him as he moved, held in place by magic when he wasn’t handling it himself. He also seemed to be able to dismiss it and call it up again instantaneously, and he made use of this ability with shocking utility, dismissing the glaive when the momentum might have left him imbalanced, or when he needed to be in the place it occupied, but then pulling it from nothing again when he needed its reach to block or strike. Since he could dismiss it and bring it out again so seamlessly, there was no chance of it getting knocked away or hopelessly stuck in the flesh of his enemy.
And he always put the force of his whole body into those glaive strikes, driving them forward with explosive kicks, or dropping from above like a falcon, the weight of his entire body behind the dive, further propelled by the power of expending a chambered shell.
This is what it means to use the inventory system, Demi thought in a daze. I mean, to really use it. He uses it like an extension of his body, like an extension of reality.
And he had to. This creature demanded every trick that Aelfric had at his disposal.
The vines around the legs of the beast could apparently be wielded like tentacles, each as swift as the strike of a cobra. Aelfric dodged these when he could, stepping into the air and jumping off nothing, or dashing through shadows. When he could not dodge the tentacles, he parried them with his glaive, but no matter how many of the tendrils he sliced off, there were more to replace them, and the pieces that he did slice off did not lie dead on the ground, but instead twitched violently and then slithered back to the mass of the monster.
Apart from powerful area-of-effect spells, the only thing that seemed to give the thing even slight pause were the explosives that Aelfric hurled at it whenever there was an opening. When an explosion hit, the thing shuddered, and a sizable hole appeared in it.
But soon enough, viscous black fluid filled the hole as if it had never been there.
He kept at it, throwing powerful explosives whenever there was the hint of an opening.
How many bombs is he carrying? Demi wondered, her mind spinning in circles as she watched him fight. This is an alchemist. This is how an alchemist fights: with guile and preparation and holding nothing back.
And it wasn’t only bombs, although they were the most arresting of the items he pulled from nowhere to either throw at his enemy, consume himself, or smash against the ground. He saturated the ground and the creature with accelerant and then set it ablaze. He tried a dozen different ways to bind it, to slow it down even a little bit. He tried poisons, one after another after another, corrosive acids, caustic salts. Surely the things he threw at the creature and at the ground would have hurt both her and Aelfric greatly if it had not been for the protection spells that he had thrown down at the very beginning.
Even now he was trying to contain both the monster and the chaos he was causing as he tried to fight it.
But then something even more awful happened.
He had just soaked it with a storm spell and then electrified it, and the smell of the lightning still cut the air around them.
From the back of the beast, a wrinkled, fleshy neck rose up, long, slender, and whiplike.
There was a human head on the neck, but it was not growing from the neck in anything like a natural manner. Instead, it looked as if it had been impaled. The thick tentacle of the neck was thrust through one of its ears and out one of its eyes.
And once this head appeared, the terrible monstrosity began using magic.
Aelfric did his best to keep range from the monster, but it was still growing, absorbing the blightwood into itself. Inevitably he had to start fighting it back with his glaive directly, although he did keep shooting and firing off spells whenever he had the opportunity. It could move surprisingly quickly when it made use of the vine tendrils instead of its bear feet.
A second head on a stalk appeared from the back of the creature, and then a third. Each time this happened, the creature began using a new kind of magic. Each head seemed to be capable of casting magic independently, which meant that Aelfric was now fighting a gigantic, horrifying monster with three mages attached to it.
No matter how good he was, he began to lose ground. He was beginning to show fatigue, repeatedly throwing back potions to fortify his stamina—but he was sweating, covered in filth and grime from the fight.
This was not a fight that he could win.
Demi understood that just by looking at him. He was fighting desperately, with all of his blood and breath and bone, all while keeping up the barrier he had put in place in front of her.