II-100 The Last of Her Lein (III)

Okay. I’m going to be honest. Summoners shouldn’t be considered a Class archetype. I mean, what the hell does Summoner mean? That they just send spirits and creatures off to fight for them? That’s not how it always works. Some of them are closer to being shapeshifting warriors in that they can just call on creatures they’ve pacted with to fuse over them. Meanwhile, some of these other idiots are just throwing waves of meat into the grinder while casting support spells on the side.

I think what we need is a separation between Mastermind and Conjuration. Because the former is reliant on empowering forces beyond their own strength and the latter just calls on aspects of power they’ve taken from others.

Like, let’s compare Lein the Last to most other Summoners. How does she fit? Those of you that have seen her fight know this—She literally has a lance that traps your soul and makes you serve her eternally, drawing you out to fight with her like an armor-puppet she can channel any time.

And her base Class was literally Dragoon! Summoner? Summoner! These general titles are going to get someone killed someday.

But Lein… that one’s a special bag of bullshit in general. I heard to get her Soulslaver Class, she basically had to beat and force over a thousand different demons to literally surrender to her. I mean… can you imagine the effort and time? Does that sound like a requirement for a Summoner or a Warrior?

And what the hell are the weaknesses? Too slow? She Summons a Thunderbird. Need healing? A Hydra. Needs something esoteric? Time Golem. It’s all out of whack. Fighting her is a goddamn nightmare.

-Trespassers’ Compendium Entry, The Problem With Summoners

II-100

The Last of Her Lein (III)

Lein came for Wei like in an avalanche of Essence. The world behind her combusted and shattered. Fractals cleaved out from her countless summoners, surging toward the young master in forms of chains and shackles to keep him bound in place. Her speed and power was beyond anything he faced before—her projected power slamming into him like a literal lance of force.

A hole would have been threaded clean through the young master if not for the protections offered by his Celestial Flames. Yet, even his Deconstruction flared bright around him, clashing against other Essences, more attacks came in a brutal downpour, each mystical bolt containing enough energy to blow a chunk off a grand mountain.

So Wei didn’t linger in place. He began to move—and erratically so.

Gunhead (Rare)= Allows the Shell to fire a beam of Source that allows them to transposition between points in space. Distance is converted from (Omniscience).

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For all Wei’s Form of the Withering Harvester could do, it required him to cut reality, to designate the exact parameters of what he wanted to destroy. It took time—and that was something he absolutely didn’t have at all right now.

The Gunhead changed that.

In an instant, Wei’s face transformed, shifting into a long-barreled rifle that wasn’t so different from the weapon Kalrus offered him. It fired a loud crackling shot, and his very being thinned into a tendril of Source. A flood of Essence impacted where he once hovered, and the world there turned to blinding light. Ten kilometers of space vanished into a mixed ball of destruction, with waves of acid, fire, frost, lightning, and more sweeping over the lands. The only direction the blast didn’t travel was toward the Hound, toward the Withered Moon.

As Wei barely kept ahead of the attack, he stole a glance at the God of Death. The Hound looked on, observing the battle wordlessly. Fused to its chest, Vendrian struggled and grunted, doing all he could to break out and join the fight. Normally, Wei would be offended if someone intruded on a duel he was fighting but now—

“I will show you what it means to break and burn,” Lein roared, her voice shaking existence itself. She rose high into the air, her body an amalgam between her armored humanoid self and the burning, bloodied visage of her phoenix. Hovering over the land, she was like a rising dawn in this bleak place, but from the skies rained trailing lances of flaming gore. Even after Wei’s projectile stopped a good twenty kilometers away from where he first fired himself, she was still there, growing larger, burning brighter, her blood and fire raining hard upon the land.

“She is expanding her zone of control,” the Shell said. Wei could feel her doing something to the air as well—there was a barely seen field that was expanding out from her as well, as if she was creating a microreality within the Final End. Again, Wei eyed the Hound to see if the god would take any offense, but they continued to do nothing. “Do not expect to be saved by another. We provoked this. We wanted this. Now we must finish and prevail. Whatever it takes.”

The young master summoned his scythe again as his Eidolon’s bright died to choking embers. His Class’s powers shifted from its offensive form to defensive, and Wei went through his Inventory. With how powerful Lein was, he didn’t have any feeble tricks that could delay her for long, but he still had his gun. That along with his scythe would be his greatest edge.

But with the speed at which his bullet traveled… he needed to get in close. Very close. Frankly, he should have shot her when he had the chance instead of trying to carve pieces of her away. It also just showed how much harm Earth-sourced materials could do to beings with spirits—enough to make Duke Goldskull seem an easy opponent.

Another burst of power rippled out from Lein, and through the rain, her other summons began to descend, all of them screaming toward Wei. The young masters let out a low grunt of annoyance before he considered how to proceed.

“Never hold to one place with her. She is too powerful—and too fast. We must cut angles constantly and randomly. We cannot afford to be predictable. But we also have things she cannot counter.”

Wei understood what his Shell was trying to tell him. His Source-spears could damage and destroy almost any attack. He could unleash them on Lein and inflict harm—no matter how minimal they seemed at first, they would chip away at her spiritual foundations upon landing. His new fist would also let him parry massive blows that should obliterate him outright. But even with these things together, he was dancing on the edge of a very thin blade.

Memories of facing the Celestial Vanguard returned to him. What he needed to do here today was at least equal in magnitude as what he achieved with the Vanguard. He could afford no mistakes. But that also freed him in other ways. He could spend his Source heavily with his new Core Advancement—and the fact that if Lein hit him, he would cease to exist regardless.

Quickly, he plotted his path and slashed out with his scythe. In an instant, he blinked into the falling rain, his ashen aegis countering the falling streaks of fire, countering the clashing Essence with his own. Within each drop of burning blood was a searing power meant to burn holes through the densest metal. As it splashed against Wei, he felt his Class combust with brightness—and in scant seconds, he would be vulnerable to direct attacks again. He would need to keep spending his Class Essence. Stay defensive. Stay countering. Stay—

An echo warned him of another impending death. A rumble of thunder was his only forewarning of what was to come as a massive shape tore through the curtain of burning crimson. Wei fired his Gunhead and immediately Essenceshifted. A massive lighting made bird tore through where he used to be, leaving afterimages of fracturing electricity in its wake. Wei glided between the falling raindrops as he climbed fast.

He was going to get above Lein, past where the rains were falling—

Suddenly, an implosion of Essence nearly tore him out of his shifted form. Some of the burning blood congealed together, becoming as if a portal, and Wei felt the Duchess’s projected field of influence come into effect for the first time. 

She teleported through the gore she rained, striking out as her burning body reformed, thrusting so hard with her lance that a pocket of force burst across the land.

Wei glided around her blow in streams of Celestial Wind, before solidifying a mere meter away from her skull. So close, he could feel the immensity of her spirit, her very being trying to turn him to cinders and sour his blood. His aegis went from ash to light in a heartbeat, but that was enough. From his left arm exploded a salvo of spinning spears, each of them forming a shroud of blade behind him. A series of attacks came—each launched by one of her summons, and they all shattered against the spears of Source. In the brief time that brought Wei, he tried to summon his rifle—but found himself desperately shifting his right arm to the Gauntlet as Lein reached out to grab him.

He struck her hand before it could wrap around his skull. He redirected its movement back into her own head, and a brutal impact followed. The blast of concussive energy would have pasted any lesser Knight—or Wei before he broke Goldskull. As such, his Fortification was enough for him to withstand the secondary effects of Lein lightly jabbing herself in the jaw.

Though not without harm.

Both his ears had popped. The bones inside his body felt like a bag holding sharp pieces of metal. Sight was gone in his left eye, while his right was filling with red. Still, the young master fought on, ignoring the pain, ignoring how faint his self was getting as he burned more Source and forged more spears.

“Press the assault!” His Shell shouted. “Do not let her decide the terms of this fight. Make her react to you! Always!”

And Wei gave himself to the battle entirely. He slashed out with his scythe—but broke distance above the Duchess instead. Though her speed was far greater, the sudden shift in position was enough to throw her off. She swept out with her lance through where she thought Wei was, but found herself a good hundred meters above. Which was when a Lance of Calamity rammed deep into her lower hip—exploding in a kaleidoscope of colors as a shroud of ash settled around Wei once more.

Echoes formed before him. He saw more deaths approaching—so many deaths. He fired his Gunhead once, twice, thrice, shifting his position each time as he unceasingly unleashed more and more Source-spears at the Duchess. Her summons were rapidly closing in—and he felt another roar of thunder, a prickle of static dancing along the back of his neck.

He didn’t have time for this.

The Thunderbird came. But this time, Wei met it head on with his Gauntlet. It slammed hard into his vector-shaping fist at impossible velocity—and Wei felt his shoulder turn to paste—the bones within sinking a finger’s length deep into his chest. Source sprayed from his mouth and pain filled his mind. But the deed was done: the Thunderbird was launched immediately after his Lance—masked by the Skills approach as it crashed hard against Lein barely less than a second after the first impact.

A cry of surprise pierced the air as Lein’s phoenix shrieked. Wei fired his Gunhead again—and had his rifle ready the moment he rematerialized. He fired immediately, his Omniscience ensuring that he couldn’t possibly miss. Not within a hundred meters. Not over a hundred kilometers.

But what he lacked wasn’t accuracy but speed. The Duchess vanished into a puff of infernal blood, and a hundred other Essence Signatures approached to take her place.

“Damnation!” Wei snarled.

“Focus!” His Shell shouted. There were more threats coming, and the Duches… Well, Wei had no idea where the Lein the Last was anymore. With all the Essence bearing down on him, he had too— “You need to recover. Carve what nourishment you can from them. Restore what is broken in you. Continue the fight. Be precise, not hasty to finish this. She is a warrior as well—a fool would have lingered and tried to bury us with raw power. We do this with care.”

And Wei listened. The Shell was rarely wrong when it came to combat, and now, Wei could feel himself almost dry of Source, of everything. But Essence flowed about him, and all the Fathoms were a place of plenty for him. If Lein wished to make this a battle of attrition, he would make this last. He would make this hurt.

He pivoted into an attack immediately, cutting past the initial barrage of projectiles with his Gunhead. He materialized next to a strange armored horse with burning eyes—and then swept his Harvester through its neck. He felt a jolt of pressure go through his left arm—his only working arm right now, and rather than break them for fragments, the carved Source from their spirits, destroying the summon on a fundamental level. Another beast came to strike at him from behind, but Wei ejected more Source-spears and sent them out in a wave.

The careless and brutal found themselves run through by his attack, their bodies rupturing, their spirits wounded in ways that would never truly heal again. Cries sounded from them, but the voice that came was not from any beast, but rather than Lein the Last herself. Each of them were connected to her, and she was connected to them as well. The sounds of her anguish were a bolster to Wei’s morale. He blinked from place to place, producing more Source-spears—enough to form his own counter-tide against Lein. Between Essenceshifts, Lances of Calamity, and slashes from spear and scythe, Wei fought a battle no other Marquis-Tier Sinner could.

He was a tiger fighting a storm, an avalanche—and the avalanche was screaming.

“What are you!” He heard Lein bellow. “Who are you?”

The young master told her not with words, but with his carving scythe, slice truer than feels and deeper than her soul. The first of her summons burst apart, and Wei felt a soothing ache fill his right shoulder as it snapped back into place. His insides were raw and ablaze with pain, and most of his senses and lesser organs were still ruined.

But he was in this fight, and in this place of death, he was a harbinger of destruction, he was the dance, and he was alive—

An echo formed before his eyes—it almost came far too fast. From within one of the creatures flashed a spark—then a supernova of flame and blood. Wei fired his Gunhead—preparing to avoid Lein’s attack. But then the spark died, only for her to materialize in the path of his escape. Wei tried to halt his transition, but it was too late. Once he fired himself, there was no taking things back. So it was that he found himself accelerating past the edge of the Final End, accelerating faster to avoid the fiery grasp of Lein.

But he was not faster than her. Not nearly. And however far his Gunhead could make him travel, it ended at the edge of his Omniscience.

There was nothing for it. He needed to do something desperate. He halted, emerging with full Shell manifested—

Only for a explosion of lightning to erupt out from Lein’s chest. An echo came—but there was nothing Wei could do this time but brace with his Gauntlet. She was too fast, and he was too close. He parried the Thunderbird out of place, only for Lein to punch through the creature and seize it by the neck.

Immediately, he felt the armor protecting his throat cave in, felt his flesh bubble. He pulled his rifle out of his Inventory, tried to fire—but her fiery wing swept past his arm, turning it into nothing but cinders.

The rifled spiraled beyond his grasp, its barrel glowing hot, its stock and trigger burning and melting like wax.

Darkness momentarily filled Wei’s vision as pain sent him past the edge of coherence, only for the Lein to start driving her Lance into his chest.

Cold pain surged through him. There was no more banter between them, no exchange of insults or breakdowns on her part. She was a warrior; she would see him dead and dominated rather than torture him for pleasure or cruelty.

He was a fool to think he could win this fight, a fool to imagine—

“Stop pitying yourself! Fight!”

Wei Essenceshifted just before her lance could pass through him completely. A burst of pressure from her spirit sent him tumbling as she seized his leg, and tore. A scream escaped Wei’s lips as he felt his left leg come free at the hip, but as he twisted and turned, he glimpsed what was below him—the darkness.

The abyss.

And Wei saw. And Wei realized the magnitude of Lein’s mistake.

She was a warrior. But she was also enraged, hunting and hounding him blindly, without thought of where she was, or what she was hovering over.

Just as she swept her lance through his other leg, barely missing his torso, Wei forced his mind through the pain and he lashed out with a strike of his own. Again, he wasn’t targeting Lein, but the distance between her and what lingered far below. But she was fast—delivering three blows for every one of his, and it was all he could do to lose parts of himself without giving his life entirely.

To finish this, a sacrifice had to be made. He just hoped he could survive this.

Manifesting his Chassis, he felt her lance lodge inside his stomach as he nearly broke from the pain, but the Shell’s materialization surprised Lein enough for Wei to bring these proceedings to an end.

He cut. And he cut the place that separated Lein from the abyss below. As he did, the Hound laughed, Lein’s summons closed, and darkness crept over his vision, mingling with the nothing below.