Project Seraphina [L 3.141 The Seventh Ascent XI

Lysette doesn’t attack right away.

She keeps her position just off the ground, about twenty paces away from , and watches all three of us with a curious expression.

I motion toward Chloe, recasting the [Angel’s Grace] and [Etheric Armor] spells that have long since lapsed.

She follows suit, casting [Saintess’s Blessing] and [Saintess’s Cloister] upon us, and Nicholas casts [Strategist’s Gambit] once more, which I imdiately set to [Vitality] enhancent.

I don’t know what kind of magic Lysette will use, but until I can formulate a proper plan of attack, my first and highest priority needs to be making sure that none of us die or are otherwise incapacitated.

My eyes glance toward Mirae, who is floating on wings of purest ice.

Lysette alone will be more than enough of a challenge; I hope to the goddesses— not counting Lysette as part of that— that Mirae decides not to join in as well.

They shake their head, rotating their neck and crossing their arms as they glance at .

“Please, do not concern yourself with .

I’m just here to observe my lady as she fights.

She alone is your opponent.”

Mirae’s words do little to assuage .

Their loyalty to Lysette is absolute, and I don’t believe they intend to go against her wishes.

But while Lysette might have requested they not intervene, I have no doubt they will do so the mont the battle turns against the self-proclaid goddess.

The problem is that I don’t see a way the three of us can beat the two of them if this is an elaborate ruse.

I decide to hedge my initial strategy on the truth of Mirae’s words, and try to co up with a plan to defeat Lysette, or at least cripple her sohow.

If Mirae is lying, we can’t win anyway, so there’s no point in making further calculations down that line of possibilities.

Lysette smirks.

“Are your preparations ready?

Can we begin?”

I draw Filia into a more defensive posture, more akin to a quarterstaff.

The only thing I know about Lysette’s fighting style is that she’ll try to turn her appendages into vines, either to trip us, bludgeon us, or grapple us.

I don’t know how many she can make, or how well she can control them, but I know she had hundreds of them when she was sitting on her throne.

Good goddesses above, this is going to be an absolute pain in the ass to fight.

I take one deep breath, then I charge forward.

Lysette smirks, nearly knocking

off my feet as a vine juts up out of the ground, poised to impale my foot from beneath in what I’m sure would have been bloody and painful.

“Seraphina, you focus on attacking.

Rember, I will support you from afar.”

“Be careful, love.

I don’t know how far Lysette can attack from.”

Chloe nods, sprouting her own wings, hovering about a foot off the ground.

I follow suit, deciding the only course of action is to attack and see how Lysette responds.

Nicholas begins chanting so sort of new technique, one which doesn’t seem to have any imdiate effect upon .

Fifty feet, then forty, then thirty.

And Lysette is just floating there, not making a single move to counter .

Does she want to lose?

Or is she so confident in her defenses that she’s using her perceived weakness as a ploy to lure

in?

No, if that’s the case, I’ll just have to fight my way out of it.

Fifteen feet, then ten.

Lysette’s smile widens, the toothy grin stretching just a bit beyond what a human’s mouth should be capable of.

A single finger on her right hand fidgets, and a mass of vines shoot out from her torso as though she suddenly revealed a massive maw where her stomach would be.

Maybe a weakness?

I hope it’s a weakness.

It better be a weakness!

Vines fly out of her new orifice, causing

to reverse course and fly back.

They attempt to grapple , at which point, I begin spinning Filia around in a coordinated practice as I’ve practiced with them over the previous several weeks.

Each vine is far tougher than it has any right to be, requiring a good portion of my physical might just to slice through a single one.

Trying to cut through two or three at a ti is all but impossible, forcing

to switch to [Speed] enhancent in an attempt to sidestep the dozens of attacks assailing

every second.

“We’ll never win like this, Seraphina.

We need to launch an offensive strike!”

“But there’s no opening!”

“Let !”

In a blinding flash, Filia unleashes their [Brilliance], flooding the area with the light of the sun.

And yet, it does absolutely nothing to slow the advance in the slightest.

Lysette continues to float there with a confident, almost smug expression.

Her eyes are now closed, her fingers continuing to twitch as I’m attacked from the front and behind at the sa ti.

Shit shit shit!

She must have so sort of sensory sphere as well that doesn’t rely on visual perception.

Of course she would; why would I be the only one to develop so sort of technique?

Just as I’m about to be pierced directly in the chest, her movents slow down, giving

a chance to dodge the attack and sever the attacking tendril.

Damn it, after all of this, she’s pitying ?

Going easy on ?

Just what is she?

The next two attacks are just as easy to dodge, and I realize.

It’s not that Lysette has slowed down of her own volition.

Whatever spell Nicholas has cast is taking effect.

Her attacks are weaker, slower, and less pointed, and the physical constitution of her vines has weakened considerably.

So sort of [Debilitation] technique?

I have to assu it operates similarly.

This, in turn, makes Lysette smile.

“Interesting.

Perhaps you are not as weak as I’d feared.

Now then, shall we turn up the pace a bit?”

Her hands begin to glow, one a fiery crimson, the other, a cool azure.

A sphere of fla erges, narrowly avoiding my cheek as I tilt my head out of the way at the last second.

A shard of ice in the shape of a thick needle follows, which I parry with my [Wyvernscale Buckler] at the last second.

And the pace of vine attacks has increased, almost to where they’d been before.

Not wanting to be beaten through sheer attrition, worn down by thousands of attacks over the course of minutes, I decide to accept a couple of hits, letting [Saintess’s Cloister] shield , so I can prepare a [Fire]-aligned [Elental Ether Strike].

I sidestep an attack, sorsault over another, and use Filia to bat three more out of the way in quick succession, a movent pattern similar to what I observed Nicholas performing earlier.

There!

A tiny opening presents itself, right near Lysette’s left shoulder.

Blocking one last attack with my buckler, I unleash fifteen hundred points of [Ether] into my attack, sending a surging burst of scarlet energy careening toward the blonde goddess.

An explosion disorients , clouds of dust rising as the attack collides with Lysette’s amorphous body.

And yet, sothing is wrong.

Sothing is very, very wrong.

I know I hit her.

I felt the impact connect and heard the sound of my blast hitting her form.

But her strength should have diminished sowhat from such a powerful blast.

And yet, through the smoke, I detect that she’s completely unhard!

How does she have such colossal offensive and defensive strength?

And how in the world am I supposed to damage her if she can shrug off an attack that powerful?

“Interesting!” Lysette says.

The smoke finally appears, revealing that Lysette has covered herself with so sort of bright pink armor, which now coats her entire being from head to toe.

It seems to be made of so sort of thick, dense crystal.

I’m not sure where she got it…

Did she create it out of nothing?

Or does she have an [Inventory] like ours?

Damn, I thought this fight was already going to be bad.

But I’m genuinely not sure how I’m supposed to win.

“I am legitimately impressed,” she says.

“I didn’t think I would have to resort to my crystalline carapace so soon.

I offer my blessings to you all.”

“Wait… are we done already?” I ask.

Lysette smiles sinisterly.

“Of course not.

I want to see the depths of your strength!

I want to see you manifest the power that defies fate and overrides the natural laws put in place by your world itself!”

Chloe closes her eyes, her hands outstretched.

Her body glows gold as power concentrates harder and denser into the palm of her hand.

This ti it’s Nicholas who plays the role of point man, blocking Lysette’s furious onslaught toward my girlfriend as I shift into position.

Even before I’ve finished my plan, he’s already rushing into place, ready to do his part to maximize our chances of victory.

My [Elental Ether Strike] might not count as a spell, but the effects of [Rainbow Chain] don’t require that I chain particularly strong spells together.

So, to conserve my [Ether], I start with a weak [Fiery Beam], a simple [Fire] and [Straightness] combination which does nothing more than bounce off Lysette’s shell.

Next, I combine [Ice] and [Compression] together into a [Frozen Shell].

A burst of [Impulse] sends it flying into the armored shell, infusing it with cold energy.

The shell might be more crystal and less tal, but even it should suffer so structural degradation after being exposed to a sudden temperature drop.

Without waiting to confirm this, I imdiately start casting the next spell, an [Air Blade] composed of a simple three-dinsional array of [Wind], [Compression], and [Sharpness].

The flow of [Ether] around

starts to coalesce, my bandana glowing slightly as I enter the third stage of the chain.

A burst of concentrated air follows as I finish putting the spell together, hitting Lysette’s armor with thousands of tiny razors of Etheric energy, fonting and then expanding innurable tiny cracks within her shell.

Lysette is gaining the upper hand on Nicholas, even as she sends a token number of tendrils to try to knock Chloe and

off course.

Chloe is able to dodge them due to staying at range, while Filia is helping

avoid the worst of the ones headed in my direction.

Another parry, another thrust, sidestep, backflip, and–

There!

[Earth] and [Expansion], together with [Sharpness] once more, and now supplented with [Piercing] for a little bit of added force.

I wedge the [Earthen Pick] into the chestpiece of Lysette’s shining pink armor, furthering the largest crack even as my divine opponent attempts to stitch herself and her armor back together.

Should you not survive this, Lysette, I think to myself. I do apologize.

But you asked

to give it all I have, and that ans coming at you as though I an to kill you.

[Lightning] combines with [Multiplicity], [Intensity] and [Impulse] to form the hamr to my earlier chisel.

With this, the [Ether] cost reductions begin to take effect as I enter into the fifth level of the [Rainbow Chain].

A swell of external Ether fills my hand, supplenting the magical energy I draw from within my own [Ether Core] as I Manifest yet another three-dinsional space in the crevices of my mind.

With an ear-crushing roar and an explosion of force that nearly knocks

back, the crystalline barrier Lysette had before ford now cracks, then shatters into thousands of sapphire shards that rain down upon Nicholas and .

Nicholas takes damage, most of which is absorbed by [Saintess’s Cloister], while I’m able to dodge nearly all of them, one grazing my right wing slightly.

But there’s no ti to relent from the temporary victory we’ve swindled.

[Darkness] and [Snaking], [Multiplied] manifold with another glyph array, and I form my own [Tenebrous Tentacles with which to fight off Lysette’s thousandfold vines.

Hers are slimr, more agile, and she’s far more adept at using them, but with a bit of intent behind my spell, adding in a quick [Attachnt] glyph to the previously ford array, I’m able to grapple Lysette’s appendages and slowly coil my way around and up to her main body, locking her in place as the chain reaches its final stage.

“Are you ready, Chloe?” I ask.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, love!”

With a quick feint, I stab twice at Lysette before falling back.

Standing beside Chloe, the two of us synchronize our [Ether], balancing out our levels a bit after Chloe feeds

about two hundred points through [Sacrificial Transference].

Her [Scouring Light] now maximized and nearly complete, I begin tracing the final glyph.

The one that’s going to decide the outco of this fight, one way or another.