"Ready?" The cloaked woman asked, angling her swords at the charging beast.
The man with the hammer responded with yet another decisive "shrug," showing his agreement.
Fast approaching its two challengers, the beast dumped as much power into its attack as possible. Its body became enshrouded by a vibrant green light. But, rather than being tamed and orderly, the energy danced in chaotic strands.
I couldn't be sure, but it was as if the beast had been overloading itself. Going beyond its limits to end the fight, once and for all.
pαпdα Йᴏνê|,сòМ Though it was hard to tell from where I'd been lying, I could see an enormous torrent of purple-green orbs flowing into the cloaked woman's body as she prepared a thrust.
The bear accelerated again and leaped forward, aiming for the woman first. It must have believed she'd be the easier target. Something I assumed, too, given her slender stature compared to the man next to her.
Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the bear, I was wrong.
The beast had entered within a meter when a brief flash of light filled the forest, followed by the crack of thunder. After my vision finally returned from momentary blindness, the scene before me seemed to freeze in time.
Though they were now back-to-back, it'd been like the beast and the woman had traded places.
Luckily, the woman had dodged the bear's blow, given how the spot where she'd been was crushed into a small crater by the grizzly's pawprint. If she'd been...if anyone had been hit directly by that strike, they'd no doubt have been flattened.
On the other hand, it took a moment for my mind to process what the woman had done. Likewise, the beast's flesh along its shoulder and side had been just as stunned, considering a few moments passed before it split apart from the slice.
The beast bellowed a guttural cry as a layer of the flesh on its side came undone, revealing the bloodied pink muscle underneath. Though it was a majorly damaging first strike, it looked as if the two weren't ones to take chances.
Rather than letting up their attack as we'd foolishly done, the two began an unrelenting synchronized assault.
The man followed up his ally's first strike with gusto. He spun his hammer vertically, gaining momentum with every second of rotation until the head uppercut the bear's underjaw, shattering the bones and teeth within to fragments.
The force of the attack transferred to the beast, lifting its upper body slightly from the ground onto its hind legs.
Seizing the opening her ally had created, the woman dashed in and made repeated incisions along the beast's side and exposed belly.
She ran next to the beast's side, twirling her blades to create perfect "X" slashes across its flesh. Her cuts were so precise that the blood sprays which followed, jetted out in flawlessly thin and straight lines.
Her attacks hadn't just been physical, oddly enough.
Somehow, with her magic, she must've electrically charged her swords. An assumption I'd had since arcs of purple-blue electricity had now flown from each blade, sizzling the grizzly's hide to a crisp.
With spots of blackened burnt fur, smashed indents on its flesh, and sliced-off skin, the beast was on its last legs. Despite how much the thing could heal, the two's successive strikes overwhelmed its regeneration to the point of exhaustion.
"Yeah! Fuck it up!" Takagi cheered ecstatically.
Though he'd been pale as a ghost, his happiness brought a degree of color back to his skin. He had a sparkling smile of admiration toward the two, probably because of how flawless their combo assault was.
I mean, his excitement made sense. When Takagi and Agawa fought it, they barely managed to wound the beast enough to force it into recovery.
Meanwhile, the two before us weren't fighting with the grizzly as we had.
What we'd been watching wasn't a battle; rather it was practically one-sided execution! Blow after blow, the beast fell lower and lower to the ground, trying to recover some semblance of the initiative.
But gaining an initiative wasn't possible for the grizzly given that it was in full panic mode, rapidly trying to mend the wounds as new ones were created to replace them.
"A-Amazing, " Agawa muttered, her eyes gaping in awe. Though the gore made her wince occasionally, she'd still remained transfixed on the scene ahead of us.
The beast's legs fully buckled and slammed to the ground on its belly.
Seeing the opening, Takagi screamed out again. "Hell yeah! Finish it!" He raised a fist and thrust it as high as he could into the air, shouting various praises and profanities the whole time.
We were all euphoric. Though I did find it unpleasant to watch a creature's death, a brutal one at that, I had been overjoyed that our ordeal was nearly over.
Finally...finally victory was within our sight!
Oddly, the two saviors fighting clearly hadn't felt the same way. Instead of finishing the job as we'd expected, they nodded to each other and disengaged.
The hammer wielder swung his weapon onto his shoulder and rushed toward us, generating more magic on the way. The other combatant, the cloaked woman, stood alone a few meters from the critically injured grizzly, stockpiling blue-green orbs of energy.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Takagi despaired. "Finish the damn thing!"
"Shut up, wouldja?! That's 'xactly what they're doin! It's too dangerous right now!" The archer shouted back in irritation, trying to focus on Nakamura's wounds. "Geez," she hissed, "no patience with some people."
'Too dangerous? Patience?' I was utterly confused by what she'd meant. I mean, they had it?! They could've slain the beast then and there!
Though I soon realized what she'd meant about "danger."
Like earlier, the blinding green aura around the beast had become turbulent as it formed a miniature maelstrom of energy. Then, the beast staggered to its feet and roared what would be its final attempt at victory.
It charged up the energy, centering all of it on its back until the quills vibrated violently from the magic pressure.
Then, the beast raised its head, bellowed, and released everything at once, ejecting every quill from its back to form an explosion of spears that flew in every direction.
The man slid to us, dropping his hammer in the process, and turned toward the beast. He then threw both hands up with flat palms and ejected all the magic he'd accumulated outward to create a shifting wind wall.
It wasn't like the blue-green variant we'd seen before. While that was silent and boasted a more refined look, the wind wall before us was tumultuous and chaotic, like a flattened tornado.
Then, within a second, what I'd heard alongside the wind's uproar were the repeated thumps of skewers sticking into wherever they could. Dozens of sounds ranging between splitting wood and pierced dirt played out in an instant.
Several quills were on a direct collision course with us, gliding through the air. They'd been thick enough to pin a man to the wall and long enough to be used as a makeshift pike.
I'll admit that I was worried. Worried that this man's wall of air couldn't stop the barrage of spikes fast approaching us.
After a fleeting few seconds, it was the moment of truth. The moment we'd discover which was stronger. The man's barrier? Or the impacts created from multiple piercing quills?
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