Chapter 87| Rising
Vivian’s eyes snapped fully open with a sharp, pained gasp, restored sight immediately taking in the devastating scene surrounding her — Allen bloodied and battered, Myria’s ice barely holding against the Prince’s relentless assault, Irene and Everlyn still dangerously unconscious nearby.
She forced herself upright despite screaming pain radiating from what she suspected were several cracked ribs, enhanced hearing and restored vision combining instantly into sharp, tactical awareness.
"Report," she gasped out, already reaching for her blade.
"Speed and regeneration beyond anything we’ve faced," Myria called back, voice tight with strain. "It’s learning our patterns the same way its mother did, only faster."
Vivian absorbed the assessment with grim, focused clarity, rising unsteadily to her feet. "Then let’s give it more patterns than it can process at once."
She moved with fluid, precise determination despite her injuries, flanking wide around the Prince’s position while Myria and Allen maintained pressure from the front, and when her blade finally found purchase against the creature’s rear flank, the resulting shriek carried genuine, satisfying pain rather than the dismissive confidence it had shown moments earlier.
"That’s one angle it wasn’t ready for," Vivian called out, already repositioning before the Prince’s rapid regeneration could fully close the wound.
Irene stirred next, consciousness returning with a pained groan, flames flickering weakly at her fingertips as she took stock of the devastating scene around her. "Someone want to fill me in?" she managed, forcing herself upright despite visible, considerable pain.
"Fight for our lives," Allen called back, deflecting another devastating strike with Ashfall Talons. "Same as always, just with slightly worse odds."
"Story of our lives," Irene muttered, though her flames flared with renewed, determined intensity despite her obvious injuries, joining the desperate, coordinated assault with fierce, unwavering resolve.
The battle’s rhythm began shifting gradually, painfully, as each of Allen’s wives rejoined the fight despite their considerable injuries, the Prince’s earlier overwhelming advantage eroding slightly as four distinct, coordinated attack patterns forced its rapid intelligence to process considerably more simultaneous variables than its earlier isolated assault against Allen alone had required.
Everlyn remained the last to stir, and when she finally did, her restored voice carried immediate, urgent purpose despite her obvious pain. "Roots," she called out, voice rough but determined, resonant magic surging even through her injuries. "I can anchor it, if everyone else keeps pressure elsewhere!"
"Do it!" Myria commanded, and Everlyn’s magic surged forth with desperate, focused intensity, thick, resilient roots erupting from the scorched earth to wrap around the Prince’s rapidly moving limbs.
The creature’s speed, for the first time since the fight began, found itself genuinely, meaningfully constrained, and Allen felt a fierce, desperate hope surge through his exhaustion and pain as the Prince’s calculating eyes flickered with something that might have been the beginning of genuine alarm.
"Now!" he shouted, and the four of them converged with everything remaining strength could offer, Ashfall Talons blazing, ice crystallizing with renewed intensity, blade finding precise, calculated openings, flames roaring with desperate, unrestrained fury.
The Prince’s regeneration, faced now with sustained, overwhelming simultaneous damage rather than isolated, recoverable strikes, began visibly, gradually faltering, the creature’s earlier confident, calculating menace giving way to something considerably more desperate.
"It’s working," Vivian called out, breathless with exhaustion and mounting hope. "Keep pressing!"
Allen felt the familiar, warm pulse of the Investment Returns System stir beneath his skin amid the chaos, considerably more intense than anything he’d previously experienced, and understood, with sudden, overwhelming clarity, that whatever reserves the system still held in store, this desperate, life-or-death battle was drawing on every single one of them.
"Together," he shouted, voice raw with exhaustion and fierce, unshakeable determination, "we finish this. Together!"
The Prince, sensing the shifting tide against it, let out a shriek that carried genuine, desperate fury, its rapid regeneration straining visibly to keep pace with the sustained, coordinated assault now converging from every direction at once. Its calculating intelligence, so effective against isolated, sequential threats, found itself genuinely overwhelmed by the simultaneous, unpredictable variables four bonded, determined fighters presented when working as one.
"Its regeneration’s slowing," Myria called out, voice tight with focused, mounting hope. "Whatever’s fueling that recovery, it’s finally reaching its limit!"
"Then let’s make sure it doesn’t get the chance to recover at all," Allen said, Shadow Transposition carrying him instantly to a position directly above the struggling, root-bound creature, Ashfall Talons blazing with every remaining ounce of dragonfire intensity he could summon.
He drove the strike downward with everything he had left, and the Prince’s furious shriek finally, unmistakably carried genuine agony rather than mere frustration, its thrashing resistance against Everlyn’s restraining roots growing steadily weaker with every passing second.
"Finish it!" Vivian shouted, and the four of them converged one final time, exhaustion and injury forgotten entirely in the desperate, focused need to end this fight before the Prince’s regeneration could possibly recover its earlier, overwhelming advantage.
The creature’s final collapse should have come cleanly, but instead, in its last, dying throes, the Prince lashed out with one final, desperate, unpredictable strike — not toward Allen, whom it had spent the entire fight focused on, but toward Vivian, whose restored sight had proven the single variable most responsible for stripping away its illusion of invincibility.
"VIVIAN!" Allen’s scream tore from his throat as Guardian’s Instinct flared with violent, absolute urgency, and he threw himself bodily between her and the creature’s final, dying lash, Shadow Transposition activating on pure, desperate instinct rather than any calculated intention.
The strike caught his shoulder instead, tearing through muscle and bone with brutal, agonizing force, and Allen crashed to the scorched earth, vision swimming, distantly aware of Vivian’s horrified scream and the Prince’s massive form finally, completely collapsing beside him.
"ALLEN!" Vivian’s voice cracked with raw, overwhelming panic, and then her hands were on him, Everlyn’s healing magic already surging forth with desperate, urgent intensity as the rest of his wives converged in frantic, terrified assistance.
"I’m—" Allen managed, agony making the words difficult. "I’m okay. I think. Vivian, are you—"
"I’m fine," Vivian said, voice shaking with residual terror and overwhelming gratitude. "You’re not allowed to do that again. Do you understand me? You are NOT allowed to do that again."
"No promises," Allen managed, and despite the agony, despite the exhaustion, despite everything the day had cost them, something in him still found room for the faintest, exhausted smile.
Everlyn’s magic worked frantically to stabilize the wound, and slowly, gradually, the immediate danger began to ease, though the weight of everything the fight had truly cost them — Hunters who wouldn’t rise again, the Prince’s devastating, nearly fatal final strike — settled heavily over the devastated coastal ridge.
Allen sank fully to the ground once the worst of the danger had passed, exhaustion and grief for the fallen Hunters scattered around them mingling overwhelmingly in his chest, and felt his wives gather close around him, battered and bleeding but alive, unmistakably, miraculously alive.
"We did it," he managed, voice breaking with exhaustion and overwhelming emotion. "We actually did it."