Chapter 351: Gonna be Golden
Shining, polished golden coins with the faces of various monarchs were held together like plates of scales, forming a golden wall that hovered in the air. The only thing that marred this perfect wall, was the small spattering of blood from Belladonna’s broken knuckles, and the indentation where she had punched that soft metal.
Planting her feet against the wall, Belladonna sprung backwards, flipping in the air before running through the air around the Boss with a frown on her face.
But before she could make another move, the golden wall disassembled itself, turning into a tide of golden coins that surged towards her and slammed into her chest like a freight train.
Belladonna grunted as she was launched from her air platform and tossed higher into the air, until she came to a sudden halt when she slammed into the ceiling. She stuck there for a few seconds, before beginning to fall, yet was immediately interrupted by the golden torrent slammed into her again, smashing her into and pinning her to the craggy ceiling.
The golden swarm parted, letting Belladonna’s body fall, where a new swarm rose from the gold littering the floor to meet her. It smacked her out of the air like she was a tennis ball, sending her skipping and bouncing across the floor, until the wall finally stopped her with a loud crash.
It was there, in a cartoonish hole in the wall perfectly moulded to her body, where Belladonna finally stopped being batted around and let out a low, pained groan.
"Ow..." She muttered, prying herself from the wall and dropping to the ground. She immediately flinched, preparing herself for another attack, but none came. The gold on the floor continued to bounce and dance innocently, as if it was laughing at her.
The stupid demon must have had some special sense that let him track them through the blindness Vestra was giving him. Whether it was Mana sense, some way to feel the change in the air or whatever.
On the plus side, the fact a new attack didn’t come meant that he probably wasn’t trying to immediately kill them. As he could easily have given them the Figg treatment of entombing their bodies and crushing them to a pulp.
On the down side, that meant that he had decided to play with and torture them before he entombed their bodies and crushed them to a pulp.
How lovely of him.
Scrambling over the laughing gold, Belladonna burst forwards again. She raced past one of the golden mountains, snatching a weapon from it as she passed. She didn’t know what she grabbed, as it was just a jewel encrusted hilt that had been sticking out the pile, but she didn’t care as she immediately threw it at a Golden Skeleton that was about to bring the axe down onto Gaia.
The baby dragon was far too distracted with swimming in the gold, a very important task, to notice the danger looming above her. But thankfully a hammer, which was apparently what Belladonna had thrown, slammed into the Skeleton’s rips and took it clean out from in the middle of it, despite the armour it was wearing.
Without the ligaments or anything tangible to stop it, the mystical force binding the skeleton together and gifting it movement wasn’t enough to stop the ribs from flying away, leaving the rest of its body to collapse into a glimmering, very expensive heap.
Leaping over the heap, Belladonna yanked Gaia from her golden swimming pool and dumped the dragon on her shoulders as she kept moving.
She lifted her hands, forming guns with her index finger and thumb, the former of which had its tip blown to smithereens as a bullet formed of blood blasted out from within.
Bullet after bullet, draining her own blood reserve each time, as she peppered the demon with a relentless barrage of shots in a technique that her American teammate would call ’Spray and Pray’.
It was a technique that Suun’Ma must have seen before, as golden coins lifted themselves from the piles around him, perfectly flying into position to catch the blood bullets.
No matter how many she blasted, or how quick, he was always perfect with his blocking. There was always a gold coin right in the way, ready to sacrifice its value for his protection.
So if that was the cost of his protection, she would just have to break her budget.
Although she was already growing pale and starting to feel a little anaemic, Belladonna forced her blood into her arm and let it gather. At the same time, she started to channel her lightning infusion, letting it crackle around her arm to give the bullet a little extra oomph.
Even with Gaia slung over her shoulders like a backpack, as she chewed on her hair, Belladonna didn’t let her concentration slip as she slowly raised her arm and pointed her open palm at Suun’Ma.
Her bicep was starting to bulge with the size of the blood bullet she was gathering, when she finally let it fly. But only after adding one last ingredient, her bloodline.
She flared it up, coursing it through her arm as she turned herself into a living rail-gun.
There was a flash of pure white light, blinding Belladonna, before blood splattered across her face. She could feel the brief pain in her arm as it was ripped apart, before it was simply reduced to nothing.
The force of the recoil threw her back, sending her spinning across the dancing coins like she was at an ice rink.
She fell forwards, having to put out her arm to support herself, before dropping to her knees and pulling out her flask.
In one go, Belladonna drained the entire thing, as well as a few extra of her ’health potions’ which flooded her system with the vital energy it needed to get to work.
The mangled stump that was left of her arm was already starting to wriggle as new muscles grew and wrapped around sprouting bone. As she healed, and could actually feel the warmth of the air on her newly growing nerve endings, Belladonna looked up at her work.
A floating golden shield blocked most of her vision of Suun’Ma, except for the portion that was flash melted and had a hole the size of an SUV through it. A hole that continued through Suun’Ma himself, carving out the entire left side of his torso, and drilled into the wall far behind him.
A faint blue streak could be seen slowly fading away, carving a path through this destruction to show the flight her bloody rail-cannon shot had taken, as if the other evidence wasn’t enough.
However, before Belladonna could even so much as smirk, the golden shield fully melted and swam through the air.
It poured itself onto the mangled body of Suun’Ma, pulling itself into the form of a new arm, before it fully hardened. The Demon flexed his new arm, curling his freshly formed fingers, before glancing towards Belladonna who still hadn’t grown back her bicep yet.
"Why... why do they always have to heal? That is just so unfair..." Belladonna grumbled.