[TTIABAD] Chapter 120: Healer and Tank VS The Behemoth of Metal

Tyler felt like every single bone in his body had broken multiple times. He was wrong because of course they hadn’t.

They’d broken dozens of times.

“AHH!” Tyler screamed, feeling yet another blow against his great shield, aura, and body reverberate through him, breaking him to pieces. He’d never been more happy with Grant’s lessons, because otherwise he knew for a fact he’d have died already. He was taking blows that he felt could cleave mountains.

But Konohora once again was protected. Guarded.

And once again she hit back just as hard.

The metal behemoth they were fighting took the blow and skidded back, only to come back even harder. That had been the theme and Tyler was starting to feel real terror. Unstoppable, mighty, unbelievably strong, and with a defense far greater than him. Tyler had met another Tank like him but with even more strength than Konohora. He’d already been launched clear across the field of flames Riary was keeping up more times than he could count. Every time was a failure, another moment Konohora was busy trying to stay alive and not attacking.

And Riary and Derek! They were being attacked! He didn’t have the time to focus on Riary but he knew she’d be okay. She wouldn’t let lightning stop her. But that fairy… that was horrifying! Fairies shouldn’t be like that!

“GAHH!” Tyler screamed, healing being shoved through him as him arm was once more rendered into powder.

“GOOD!” Bellowed out the man in the armor. He’d been enjoying using them both like a punching bag and hadn’t relented. There were dents going across him armor, but it was far from enough. Without Konohora’s healing, they’d be dead. And they needed to not just survive but win soon. If they didn’t, Derek would definitely die. He had to save him! He had to protect his team!

Tyler pushed forward with his great shield, feeling more than just his arm crack as his Aura infused his shield, stopping the hammer dead. His teeth cracked from the force, as his eyes felt they would pop out of his head, but he’d stopped the blow.

And Konohora followed up once again, slamming her metal pole into the side of the man’s face. But it seemed he wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure. All of Konohora’s hits was hard, but this was on another level, as the helmet the man was wearing crumpled and he staggered backwards for the first time in the fight.

Tyler stood still for a moment, catching his breath, as Konohora once again restored his broken body. He was no stranger to pain, but… it hurt. It hurt so much. Losing an eye, getting cut, brutal training… it was practically papercuts to feeling his body be ripped apart. But it didn’t matter. This fight… it brought back too many memories. Memories of when he’d failed. Of Riary-! Tyler felt his aura surge back. He would defend. He would protect. He wouldn’t… let anything like that happen again!

“Tyler. Be careful.” Konohora’s voice cut in, looking at the ground. Tyler blinked and glanced down. Knocking the big guy back a few feet had temporarily carved a hole in the fire. A hole where a shadow was already waiting somehow. Tyler grimaced. They weren’t just fighting one terribly tough person, they were fighting two. The assassin was lying in wait, ready to get kill Konohora at a moment’s notice.

“Hehehe. GOOD GOOD!” The big man yelled, before he dropped his hammer, reached up with both hands, and tore the front of his helmet off. Tyler finally got to see his face and it didn’t carry any surprises. The man looked like he was a barbarian, all beard, wild eyes, and a rugged face that had clearly been hit. What stood out the most was the broken nose and busted lip. The progress was slow… but there.

“I haven’t had such a good fight in ages! Hey Shelly, stay down and out of it alright? Let me have some fun for a while.”

Saying as much, he went to pick up his hammer, but at that moment a massive ball of energy appeared in the sky. Tyler gaped at it, it was bigger than two mansions stacked on top of each other. And then it came down as a million rays of light.

“DEREK!” Tyler screamed out, his heart shuddering.

“Huh. Looks like Rinkaru got bored. Or annoyed. Eh, well, poor demon I guess? Now come on! Let’s get back into it!” He said, before picking up his hammer again.

Derek… thoughts shot through his mind. This whole time, all along, he’d been suffering. That’s what had struck Tyler the hardest. Derek was just like him, summoned just like him, arrived here just like him. From earth. And yet… it wasn’t the same. He couldn’t forget how Derek had talked about experiences, the raw… pain in his voice, the way he’d seemed to talk about hell. It frightened him. Horrified him. But then… then he began to think about everything he’d been through. Could Tyler have done the same?

He’d literally gone through Hell… and then immediately saved a village and get in a fight for his life. Only then he’d been attacked and Tyler had nearly let Riary kill him. What if that was him? What if they’d been reversed? Would Tyler have saved the village? Would Derek have just stood by and watched? No. No, he would have stopped her, talked to him, helped him. They’d basically forced him to leave. He even had friends in that village and they’d forced him away.

More and more, over the past few days, he kept going over it all. The differences between them, the different decisions, the different situation. Tyler… couldn’t have handled it better. Suddenly waking up in a fantasy world as a demon, suddenly being attacked… no wonder Derek had talked about freedom the moment they’d arrived in the elven town. And then… they’d nearly attacked him again, tried to force out his secrets, while he was trying to hide the Gem. Then Happy, being teleported again, the jungle… over and over again, it seemed like life wasn’t fair to Derek. And Tyler had been… a terrible friend.

And now… Tyler had failed to protect him. To be the shield. To be a Guardian.

Tyler felt something like glass breaking, as his soul seemed to scream. A maul came barreling down on him, tearing through the air like a cannon ball, and a wide smiling face behind it.

Tyler’s eyes seemed to blaze, his stance firmed, and he raised his shield.

An explosion of sound and force radiated outwards. Wind was pushed away, the ground crumbled, and even the flames were blown away.

But Tyler hadn’t moved. He stood firm, eyes staring the man down, shield ready.

“Huh?” Was all the man got out before a hit from Konohora had him reeling back. And this time, she didn’t stop.

The man snorted and moved to smack her into paste, but Tyler moved, keeping up. Blow after blow after blow came raining down on him, but he pushed forward, never breaking, always protecting.

And Konohora beat him down.

Finally, a change came. The big man… jumped back.

“HA! You broke through?! NICE! Time to get serious then-”

At that moment, Tyler felt his body break out into a cold sweat, as a massive laser beam of energy, bigger than his whole body, blasted through the ground and air, nearly hitting their healer in the back.

The man whistled.

“Woo. Never seen Rinkaru attack twice like that. That’s pretty crazy-”

Suddenly, smaller beams began to crack through the ground and air and trees. The big man’s eyes seemed to bulge out of his head at what that meant. Tyler felt a breath he hadn’t even known he’d been holding fall out of him. Derek… was still alive.

“Whoa.” The man said, stunned, before Konohora hit him so hard in the chest he went flying. Tyler winced, seeing shards of metal go flying.

“I feel…” Konohora said, her eyes blazing with what Tyler rarely saw in Konohora. Fury. “Ignored.”

*****

Konohora was tired. And very, very angry. This fight was extremely taxing on her. She needed to heal herself, heal Tyler, fight, and watch out for the assassin. She didn’t have the defenses that Tyler did, every blow doing far more damage to her body. Her healing had a limited amount of what it could do and she was quickly reaching that limit. Which was bad.

She had seen the type of attacks and damage Derek had already taken. If he managed to actually survive and win, if they all did, her healing may not be enough. The enemy in front of them needed to be defeated. Quickly and decisively if she wanted to prevent their healer from getting involved. Once he did, she wasn’t sure she or her teammates had the resources to win.

The most annoying part, however, was how the man before them was barely looking at her. She enjoyed the strength of her body, the feeling of life inside her, and to be ignored in such a serious fight was… unpleasant.

She hit him again, doing more damage, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough. That was the Truth. As they were, they were going to lose. It was fact.

But she’d told this man that his team would be dead.

Had she lied?

‘No.’ she thought. ‘I have not.’

Her own breakthrough came easily. Simple and direct and she felt the power behind her blows increase in strength. After all, her words were Truth. But Truth was flawed, variable, not meant for everyone to speak in or practice. She carried more secrets than any Truth priestess should. Secrets that would cause great harm if they got out. And if asked, she would not be able to lie about them.

The Truth, she felt, was a wonderful thing but a flawed concept.

If her words were to be untrue, she simply had to make them be true.

She felt it then as she reached B-Rank. Her next hit did more than simply cause a dent, it shattered the front of his chest. The man finally looked at her.

“I feel… ignored.” She said.

She gripped her metal quarterstaff with both hands and swung it again, launching the man farther back, scraping a furrow across the ground.

A furrow already becoming dense with shadows.

Faster than the blink of an eye, Konohora felt a dagger burrowing itself into her neck, dense with Aura. She felt the aura spreading, both like a poison and like a sharp blade, aiming to cut off her head. And then it… stopped.

The Assassin’s eyes went wide. A blue shield was pushing the point back, one made entirely of aura. But Konohora had complete trust in Tyler. So she hadn’t hesitated. She had swung without hesitation.

CRUNCH

“SHELLY!” The healer in the back screamed.

Konohora claimed first blood in the fight, even as the lightning mage was covered in dense flames, and the armored man came running with fury in his eyes. Konohora regarded them cooly.

She was a Truth priestess. She only spoke the Truth. She had said that most, if not all, of them would die.

And they would.