Chapter 380: Real Life Boss Fight
The Purple Giant let out a bellowing roar, with foam curling from the corners of his mouth, as he swung a relentless barrage of punches. Every swing sent a blast of air down the street, pushing the cars further down the road and knocking people dozens of metres back, just from the wing pressure.
Anything already close to him, which was mainly abandoned cars and have crumbled buildings, were completely obliterated the moment one of those fists met them.
As for Valerie, she weaved through them like a leaf on the wind, not letting him even touch her shadow.
She was floating on a glowing blue runic circle, which she was constantly altering and controlling. It was an advanced version of her ’Air Step’ spell.
It took a constant drain of mana to keep the platform in existence and to further control it so that she could fly, but it was much better than relying on her feeble legs to do the trick and gave her just a hint of the agility of Belladonna.
The only downside was it meant that she had to keep her feet still and move in ways that would stop her from slipping off, as she was basically standing on a floating plate made of air. It wasn’t exactly stable or created for traction.
A collection of golden runes were emblazoned across her hands, with a rune on every separate portion of her fingers (even the one that was half cut off), on the back of her hand and on her palm. These runes were not carved into her flesh like they were with Belladonna, but simply attached to them by the perameters of the spell, the circle of which was rotating around her wrist like a very complicated bracelet.
Every movement of her hands were tracked by these runes, which was then transferred to the Giant pair of Golden Hands that were manifested in the air. The upgraded version of her Hands of Buddha technique.
These Golden hands batted away the Giant’s devastating punches and delivered blows of their own, as Valerie combined her skills in this world with the might of her alternate self in the best way she could.
When she was not punching or blocking, she would sling fireballs or let lightning bolts fly from her fingers. The best part was when she cast using somatic spellcasting, which required hand signals, she could channel extra mana into the spell and double cast it through the Giant hands as they copied her every movement.
There were two main issues , however. One, the Giant was seemingly not done mutating.
He was still growing, getting larger and stronger bit by bit every second. He had already grown an extra foot. His muscles bulged large enough that he could definitely crush Valerie’s head with just a bicep flex.
They were so big, that he had actually torn through his skin like it was a shirt that was three sizes too small.
Muscle fibres wriggled out of the tears on his arms and shoulder, waving in the air and growing in size until they soon became tendrils that were lashing out at Valerie and had to be removed. Spikes erupted from his spine and jutted through the tear that ran all the way up his back.
The more he mutated, not only did he become stronger, but it was as if he was adapting to Valerie’s attacks. Her golden punches staggered him less, her fireballs curled over his skin with less visible burn damage and lightning bolts were no longer causing his nervous system to twitch in response.
It was as if he was a living embodiment of ’what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. Which was where issue number two came into it.
The babysitting.
The commotion hadn’t just drawn out the looky-loo’s, who were standing around eyes widen and jaws agape as if this wasn’t something that could easily get them killed. At the very least, they stayed at a respectable distance, with only one or two creeping closer for a ’better angle’.
The police, who had understood their uselessness in this scenario, had thankfully taken up the role of controlling these people, even if Valerie still had to erect a barrier or two to stop them getting meat pasted.
No, what was the big issue was the ones who thought they could participate. The police weren’t smart enough, or strong enough, to stop the idiots who thought they could join in on what they called the ’Real Life Boss Fight’. But none of them were nearly strong enough for this type of thing.
Their spells were sloppy and awful, with multiple of them stammering over their words and messing up their hand signs. Feeble sparkles of lighting and pathetic puffs of flames that could barely be called fireballs were the best they gave out.
They actually hit their target about a third of the time, and hit Valerie in the back another third before she started learning to dodge everything they sent out. Almost everything.
A bolt of crackling green energy struck her right in the back, sending jolts of pain through her system and causing her to collapse onto her platform. The raging giant immediately leapt at the opportunity, literally.
He leapt into the air and came down with an earth shattering heel stomp. Valerie just managed to scoot her platform to the side to avoid being crushed but, as the street burst upwards from the impact, a chunk of road lifted up and smashed into the underside of her air platform.
It shattered the spell, sending her tumbling across the shattered road until she finally rolled to a stop.
Grumbling curses to herself, Valerie clambered to all fours and whipped her head around. Her eyes flashing red with rage as she searched the crowds of idiots to see who had done that. Her eyes locked onto the invisible trail of mana left behind by the spell, and followed it back not to one of the ’participants’ but to the crowd of on-lookers.
She could see the culprit immediately, just from the powerful aura of magic that was curling off of his body. An aura that made Valerie sick to her stomach, and was exactly like that of the Giant and like many of the other abominations they had faced.
"It’s a person..." She muttered to herself, "The reason all of this is happening, is because of a person?!"
She didn’t have long to dwell in the revelation, as the Giant Roared in fury again, his tendril-like muscle fibres wriggling he brought his fist down towards Valerie’s helpless body. However the strike never landed, as a dual bladed axe made of a strange black metal, and which seemed like it had been shattered into dozens of little pieces that were glued back together, flew through the air and struck the arm.
It cleaved through the torn mana skin and bulging, steel cable-like muscles. It even cleft through the Giant’s bones, causing him to let out another furious roar, as his severed arm slammed down onto the ground beside him.
"About damned time." Valerie muttered with a smirk, as she watched the thrown axe looped around the air, diverting its course mid-flight as it flew back to its new master.