Draneeve was a mess—loquacious, seemingly tireless, and radiating a frantic confidence that belied the fact he was burning through the very last of his mana.
'He's high on it...' Berk thought as he clawed at the hand clamped around his throat, and every desperate attempt to break the grip felt like thrashing against stone.
He gritted his teeth, feeling rageful and anxious. The more he thought about the lances, the angrier he got at how useless they had been lately, all while worrying about Delsin, whom he considered a little brother.
While Draneeve was talking nonsense about how great his loyalty is, Berk's gaze rolled, sluggish but determined, dragging itself across the crowd despite blood and sweat dripping into his eyes.
Soon, among the people, he came across those familiar aureate eyes.
"...Delsin..." With a single glance, for a single brief moment, they seemed to read each other's minds as if truly communicating through telepathy.
"HUH?! WHAT'D YOU SAY?!!"
"Hehe..." Berk laughed at his face.
"The f*ck are you laughing at, you insignificant monkey?!"
Rocks formed around Berk's hands as they covered his fists.
"What's that?" Draneeve smirked. "You think you can do sh!t right now? Sure! Here, I'll give you a free hit!" His grip loosened as he put his bare face closer to Berk.
Instead of throwing a desperate punch to the jaw, Berk snapped his hands together.
A blinding spray of dirt, rocks, and especially lots of sand erupted directly into Draneeve's open eyes and mouth.
"Aghhh—!" With a powerful swing of Draneeve's arm, he sent Berk flying through the mountain of corpses, destroying it as he yelled, "My eyes—COUGH! COUGH! COUGH—"
A flaming mace descended like a meteor. The impact could be heard throughout the cavern. Half of Draneeve's face vanished in a plume of scorched flesh and pulverized bone, his eye driven from its socket barely hanging on as the fire began to feast on it as well.
With a guttural snarl, he wrenched the flaming mace back up and brought it crashing back into Draneeve's ruined face for a second time, following up with a stomp kick.
Draneeve took the kick and was pushed backward. Pressing the advantage, Delsin lunged forward with his mace once again, crashing down just to be caught in the palm of Draneeve.
"H-huh? What...?" With a sickening wet crack, Draneeve's neck quickly snapped back into place as he adjusted his stance, looking at Delsin with his remaining eyes as though nothing had happened.
Delsin fell back and immediately prepared for another swing, but at that same moment, Draneeve's hand shot out. The mace dropped. With a sudden surge of monstrous strength, he slammed Delsin down, holding him still.
Delsin swallowed a mouthful of his own blood, his vision swimming, but he didn't stop. He rained punches against Draneeve's ruined head as one of his hands soon found the hilt of a knife in a dimensional necklace and drove the blade into Draneeve's neck repeatedly.
The skin parted. Blood sprayed, hot and dark, but the flesh didn't knit back together. Draneeve didn't regenerate. He can't.
"Painful... It's so painful... So beautiful... My lord... My god..." The madman looked up and muttered as he maintained his crushing grip on Delsin's neck. He turned back to him. "Don't you have enough? Here, let me help you..."
Before he could do anything harmful, Delsin quickly stabbed the knife deep into Draneeve's wrist. His tendons severed, his fingers loosened. Delsin broke free, his thumb snapping up, his index and middle fingers extended straight as a bolt of flame formed, pointing at Draneeve's face at point-blank range.
He fired. The high output blast struck Draneeve full in the face, sending him staggering backward.
That attack would've likely killed Draneeve, but for a light-stage orange core mage, that blast seemed like all Delsin got.
"I feel like that one should have killed me..." Draneeve finally spoke. "...I'm sorry, I lost my focus—It has been so long since the last time I had to dirty my hands and—It's just, if the lord Agrona was here, it would be wonderful, you feel me? I want him to see my progress." Draneeve is looking at Delsin as smoke rises from his face.
"..."
"My turn."
Delsin quickly dodged aside as Draneeve's punch that came toward him, destroying the cavern wall behind. And without stopping, Draneeve continued sending more punches to Delsin.
While blocking the attacks, Delsin gradually matched Draneeve's speed, which may have decreased due to Draneeve's low mana reserves. But regardless, Delsin was still losing.
He would surely be killed soon.
"...Huh?"
Draneeve's next strike faltered. His movement suddenly got interrupted. Beneath him, a good chunk of rock surged upward, clamping around his ankles and dragging his legs deep into the earth.
Delsin took this opportunity to charge up his spell. Flame bolt blasted at Draneeve at full output, only to be blocked by Draneeve's arms.
An arm emerged from the ground where Draneeve was detained. It wrenched his head down with a savage jerk. A second arm tore through the soil, clenching into a fist rose from the depths, slamming into Draneeve's jaw.
"Beat him up, Delsin!" Berk yelled, his body finally rising from the churned earth with his face set in a mask of grit and blood.
Delsin didn't need to be told twice. He stepped in, his fist found its way and landed hard on Draneeve's nose just as Berk followed with a heavy blow to the ribs. Then back to Delsin, then back to Berk. They fell into a smooth, murderous rhythm as they amplified their attacks with their own elemental attribute that gave Draneeve no room to breathe.
Draneeve made a desperate attempt to fight back, his upper body twisting as he tried to dodge and counter back, but his movements were abruptly cut short as he was blinded entirely by a sudden burst of light from Delsin's spell.
"Come on!! FIGHT BACK, B!TCH!! FIGHT BACK!!" Berk screamed, his voice raw with the release of all his built-up rage.
"These f*cking—ENOUGH!!!" A sickening sound of tearing muscle and splintering bone was heard as Draneeve threw his entire weight forward, violently ripping himself free from the trap—leaving his own shattered feet completely crushed and severed beneath the earth.
Draneeve stumbled onto his knees. "I am Draneeve!" he screamed to the top of his lungs and began to expand, bleeding out more from his wounds. "My mission here is to kill as many as possible to weaken this continent! To act as a message from the High Sovereign that he can put this continent to dust whenever he pleases!"
Draneeve swelled larger, beating like a heart and ticking like a bomb, his fractured bones popping as he prepared to detonate. "ALL OF YOU F*CKS WILL DIE RIGHT HERE AT THE HANDS OF—"
"OH! OH MY GOODNESS!"
Delsin's eyes and nose widened in awe, his arm suddenly pointing past the bloating Draneeve, with Berk also sharing the same expression, his two arms clutching his head with utter astonishment.
"LOOK OVER THERE! IS THAT AGRONA!!?"
The expansion stopped. Draneeve gasped, his massive, bloated head snapping around so hard his neck gave another wet pop. "Where—"
***
Nico Sever
A single, clean shot tore through Draneeve's skull. Instantly, the chaotic mana coursing through his bloated frame deflated, his fanatical devotion dying right in his throat as his corpse slumped forward, pinned up and supported by the blood iron spike I had driven through him.
I gasped for breath, relieved that I had actually managed to kill him on time. Seconds later, and we all would have been mist.
"YES! WAY TO GO, RANDOM GUY!" The dwarf named Berk shouted. I stood there, watching him and his friend make their way over to me, carrying each other's battered bodies step by step.
I let out a ragged sigh, unable to believe that I actually bet my life—and the lives of everyone else here—on these two. But thank goodness that dwarf and his friend saw me charging up my spell and gave me the perfect window.
The only reason their ridiculous, borderline offensive distraction had even worked was because Draneeve was already a hollow shell, thoroughly weakened and spent after tearing through the other mages. But at the very least, I had to give them some credit.
"HAHA!" Berk offered me his hand, and I, out of habit, offered him mine as we shook hands. "Thank you for healing me—I'm sorry, what's your name, brother?"
"Nico. My name is Nico."
"Yes, thank you, Nico!" He said, his grip tightening as he shook my hand more firmly and enthusiastically, ignoring his own bleeding wounds. He nudged his friend with his elbow. "Delsin! Thank him!"
The younger mage stepped forward, shifting his weight carefully. "T-thank you, sir," Delsin muttered, his expression a mix of genuine reverence and lingering shock. "If it weren't for you, we'd have been dead."
"You two did most of the work, so it's not all me," I replied, crossing my arms. "You two did great. Really great. Another great thing is that no one died. That maniac was really serious about killing everyone all at once—"
A purple flash lit up at the highest level of the cavern. Grey stood in his fancy, gold-rimmed black scale armor like a f*cking show-off, standing there long enough to ensure everyone caught the visual before he began his grand descent, his gaze dropping directly onto me.
Right on his heels, the rest of the Lances finally showed up, arriving just in time to secure a cavern that was now completely clear and safe.
"Great..."