Before she hit the soil, she reached out and pushed against her sword. She didn’t know where it had fallen, but that wasn’t the point: the counterforce threw her back across the ground. She skidded, bounced, and tumbled violently away from the place she’d fallen, then felt the massive force of the construct’s followup stomp shake her whole body a moment later, an attack that surely would have killed her.
A moment after that, she regenerated her eardrums enough to hear the constant sound of the construct’s chaingun as it pursued her across the ground with a hail of bullets.
Her regeneration kicked in further, first healing her fused eyelids and then her fingers. She could visualize the gatling gun tracking her body as it rolled away from where it had fallen, knew that the bullets would be tearing into her soon….
Without taking the time to get oriented, she threw herself to one side, stumbling and then leaping to avoid the hailfire of bullets before pulling herself toward her sword, reversing her momentum so that she was stumbling, then running toward the construct.
She’d regenerated most of her mobility and senses a moment later, even if moving still felt agonizingly painful. She spared a glance behind her and saw the trail of bullets from the chaingun coming closer, then tore a furrow in the earth with her claws to yank her sword across the battlefield and into her hands just in time to take cover beneath the massive blade.
As she’d expected, the chaingun’s aim wasn’t perfect when it came to tracking. The bullets sent vibrations into the roots of her teeth and the force of their impact against her sword shook her bones, burned her skin, and drove her down into the soil at her feet, but the chaingun passed over her a moment later.
She drove her blade into the earth, then leapt up onto its hilt….
The trail of bullets stopped moving just in front her, their course reversing….
Ashtoreth launched herself straight into the air as fast as she could, gaining altitude and pulling a heart out of her locket to consume while she rose.
Then, glad to have her resources back and to have regenerated most of the damage from its close-range lightning, she grinned as she looked down at the construct below her.
The chaingun’s constant fire ceased for a moment, and she saw a cloud of steam rising from the construct’s arm, obscuring it.
It had overheated.
Now was her chance.
No sooner had the chaingun ceased its fire than the construct turned, bringing its massive, beam-launching shoulder to bear on her.
She began to conjure her sword.
A gout of black smoke billowed from the construct’s shoulder, as before….
She took careful aim, trying to figure out when the perfect timing would be, trying to remember everything she’d seen of the firing sequence the first time as she glided alongside the construct.
The aperture on its shoulder opened, revealing the angry red light within….
Ashtoreth waited until the last possible moment, until the tiny beam that sighted the weapon appeared on her chest. Then she hurled her weapon with all the force she could muster.
The beam appeared as the counterforce threw her backward through the air to avoid it—but then it ceased, having only flickered for a split second.
Once again, the curved barrier made of transparent white hexagons appeared to block her sword, now in front of the beam weapon’s shoulder-mounted opening.
But this was the wrong spot.
Her sword sped through the air and made contact with the construct, tearing through the belt of ammunition that fed its cooling chaingun. She burst the blade right after it struck, creating a plume of violet fire and causing an erratic series of explosions in the stricken munitions.
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She grinned and let out an exhilarated laugh. Dazel had said that the construct had a diabolical controller, after all. No doubt it had likely been very easy to guess what Ashtoreth was trying to do as she’d floated through the air, poised with the greatsword they’d already seen her throw.
The aperture guarding the beam opened yet again, and this time she didn’t have her sword ready to throw as the beam shot forth.
Still, it was far a less threatening attack while she was in the air.
Her racial flight couldn’t lift her weight yet, but it could adjust her trajectory well enough. As the beam of obliterating light chased her across the sky, she made for a slippery target, falling erratically and weaving from side to side as she used it to apply force to her body in different directions.
The aim for the giant beam was even less precise than that of the gatling gun, but she’d expected as much: if they’d had something that didn’t overshoot and could aim on a dime, they would have used it. Instead, they were aiming by rotating their mechanical body.
The beam ceased. Launching her sword to cut the ammo-belt for the gatling gun had pushed her far, far away from the construct. From her high vantage point, she looked down on the battlefield below her, then picked out the nearest group of infernals moving to reinforce their allies against the undead.
Or as Ashtoreth liked to think of them: her next level.
She dove toward them, eating one of the charred hearts from her satchel and loading another one into her locket as she fell. Then she conjured her sword as she swooped toward them, wings flared.
There were a half-dozen devils and almost a dozen hellhounds or carnage demons, all in all. Evidently the group had been watching her fight the construct, because when they spotted her they fanned out into a battle formation. Two of the devils raised shortbows to shoot glowing arrows at her as she came close, and she launched her sword at one them to quickly dodge the missiles.
The sword struck one of the archers as she fell to the ground, knocking them off-balance. She pulled herself toward the blade as the host of demonic beasts converged on her, bounding out of their midst to grab her sword by the hilt, step past the staggered archer, then wheel and smash her sword into their side with a [Mighty Blow], cutting them in two.
She ignited their corpse, flames engulfing everything nearby and keeping the demons at bay for a moment as she spun to face the next-nearest devil, who came toward her with an axe.
“Halt,” she commanded, thrusting forward to take advantage of the devil’s momentary paralysis and drive the point of her sword through his helmet, collapsing his face. She ignited his corpse, and at the same time she launched her blade through the ruins of his skull and into a carnage demon behind him, pushing herself backward to avoid a spear-thrust as more of her enemies converged on her position.
She began to draw the hellfire around her into herself, keeping her resources topped up as she spun in their midst, striking them down with her [Mighty Blow] and igniting their corpses immediately, occasionally letting out a [Command Infernal] to gain the upper hand, either by paralyzing one of the devils or by ordering a carnage demon to attack them.
Their weapons occasionally struck home, but only ever grazed her or pierced nonvital areas. And against her massive sword, they had no real defense: even her weakest blows could send them reeling, or throw them onto their backs.
Soon the air around her was covered in whirling flames that gushed from her dead enemies and were sucked into her constantly moving sword. Ashtoreth was laughing: it didn’t matter that they had quickly surrounded her, or that they fought together as a unit, or that they had some resistance to her hellfire.
Traitor or no, she was an archfiend of pride. She was more than a match for this common rabble.
She absorbed all of the cores as she got them. Soon she’d got what she came for:
{Ding! You level up and gain 11 DEX, 11 STR, 15 VIT, 13 MAG, 7 PSY, 7 DEF}
{Reaching level 8 has granted advancement. Choose one of your progression paths other than [Hellfire].}
But she kept fighting even when their squad was down to a few stragglers. The devils broke and fled when there were only two of them left, but she chased one down and struck them in the back with a [Mighty Blow], tearing a hole through their abdomen and almost shearing them in half.
It was only then that she spotted a red gleam from across the field and from the construct she’d been trying to watch out of the corner of her eye since the fight began. She’d killed as quickly as possible, but she’d been waiting for her real opponent to strike all the while.
She planted her sword, sprang onto its hilt, then leapt into the air as the beam roared forth from the construct. She veered to one side using her racial flight ability in case the construct had learned to anticipate her movements.
Then she glided toward it, winding and weaving and occasionally dropping altitude by folding her wings. The beam ceased after a moment, and she took took a second to complete the advancement that she’d known she needed.
Ashtoreth chose [Armament] as her advancement path once more. She picked quickly, not bothering to read the rest of the system messages that accompanied advancement, choosing to retain both of the options she wasn’t picking.
{You upgraded your [Conjure Luftschloss] ability with [Luftschloss: Mighty Strike]}
“Thank you very much!” she told the system.
Then she looked down at the great golem of black metal that dominated the field beneath her. “And thank you for waiting around for me.”
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