King Of The Arena Phase 2

The arcane burns and various cuts on Vasilis’ body disappear entirely, as is expected for the second phase. What isn’t expected is that instead of charging at us, he pulls out a huge bow, and draws it back, aiming directly at Ivy.

“Skylar!” I yell. Immediately, the two of us combine our magic to intercept the flaming arrow from hitting Ivy. Even with our combined magic, the arrow stops a bare foot from Ivy’s face.

Immediately, Belle rushes forward to engage the boss once more. Thankfully, he’s **** to put away his bow as Belle assaults him relentlessly, once again using her magic with one hand, and her chain blades in the other. I join her, pouring as much mana as I dare into freezing magic to slow him down.

He’s even faster than before, and Belle and I find ourselves getting hit more frequently. Every time it happens, we have to take a step back and let Ivy heal us, while still trying to assist from a distance. Ivy’s mana is slowly getting lower and lower. Mia and Skylar’s combined magic doesn’t do a thing to him anymore.

Then it happens. Belle and I are both knocked back, with Belle heavily injured, having been struck multiple times. Vasilis stalks toward the Scarlet Witch, raising his sword high above his head.

In a flash, Mia charges in with a huge pulse of magic, using what must be the last reserves of her mana to keep him from finishing off Belle. She engages the boss desperately while Ivy heals Belle and I as quickly as she can.

Dodging and weaving around his attacks, Mia uses her flight advantage to the fullest, but I can see her starting to tire. She falters and Vasilis immediately slashes sideways, aiming to cleave through Mia’s body. She disappears from the barrier, having been claimed by fateweaving.

The time she bought Belle and I was precious, and Ivy manages to heal us both enough that we can both rejoin the fight. It was also enough time to let him pull out a healing potion and drink it, healing some of his wounds.

“Damnit! We gotta get that shield away so we can damage him properly!” Belle yells desperately.

I think for a moment, before an idea strikes me. “Ivy, trap his sword!” I shout to her, sending her mental images of what I mean.

She understands in an instant. Vasilis hefts his sword high in the air once more, and brings it down at Belle, the nimble warrior dodging backwards.

Thick vines sprout from the ground immediately, wrapping themselves around the blade of the boss’ sword as it lays embedded in the ground.

“Now!” I shout, and Belle, Skylar and I focus on his shield, pulling backwards with all our strength. The boss, off balance from the unexpected resistance, loses his grip on the shield.

Belle tosses it far away, as Vasilis punches her in retaliation, sending her faceplanting into the dirt. She rolls out of the way and I press our momentary advantage while Ivy still has his blade trapped.

I hit him with a blast of ice, noting with satisfaction that icicles are starting to appear on his armour and skin.

He rips his sword backwards with both hands, breaking Ivy’s vines and whirling the blade around. “Keep him occupied!” I shout to Belle, who nods, tapping into her last reserves of mana to blast away at him.

I use most of my dwindling mana bar to send forth a barrage of mana bolts at him, building up stacks of Arcane Torrent once more.

This time, he seems to realise what I’m doing, and switches his focus to me, slashing his sword at me in vicious, glittering arcs. He’s too slow by this point though, and I manage to avoid every one of his strikes.

The stacks hit their cap and I smile as I activate the spell. Once more, Vasilis is covered with a layer of purple arcane energy as the spell burns away at his defences.

“All together now!” I shout as the spell ends and the boss is revealed as having taken heavy damage. The three of us remaining send all our magical might at him in one last push to win the fight.

He pulls out another healing potion, but his movements are tired and slow. He can’t manage to raise the potion to his lips. As our final blast of magic burns through the rest of his health, Vasilis disappears into golden dust.

Belle and I scream as one, together in victory. The dungeon fades around us, morphing into the small loot barrier. I collect all the loot we got from the dungeon, only giving it enough for a glance to see whether we got any legendary items (we did not), before throwing it into my inventory and exiting the barrier with the rest of my guild.

I look at Belle, surprised at her celebrating with the rest of us. She grins at me. “That was fun.” She says simply.

I smile back. “It was good working with you.” I tell her.

Before she can respond, Mia collides into her, squeezing her into a tight hug. “That was awesome! You were amazing, oh my Gaia!” The aeromancer giggles enthusiastically.

Belle hesitates a moment, clearly not used to the contact, before hugging Mia back. “You were pretty cool too.” She compliments. We celebrate a little more, high fiving each other and praising each other’s performance.

I feel a little warm glow in my chest, really happy to have finally been able to work together as a team with Belle.

Olivia calls another halt to Lena and Emma’s sparring, and they collapse together this time, grateful for the break. We all head inside to shower, and Ivy, not much needing a shower or rest, starts on lunch for us all.

Belle goes to her room to shower separately (departing with a somewhat satisfied look on her face), and Lena and Emma shower in their bathroom too.

Paige is asleep when we enter our bedroom, so we do our best not to wake her. After we’ve all showered and gotten dry, we come downstairs to find that Ivy’s prepared a delicious looking lunch for us all.

Before sitting down to eat with us, she takes a plate up to the bedroom for Paige, hoping she’ll eat when she wakes up.

The conversation around the table is tired but still pretty upbeat. Belle even joins us to eat, which I’m pleased about. Lena and Emma aren’t talking as much as usual, because they’re both dead tired from training.

Mia talks enough for both of them though, and the nine of us have an extremely pleasant lunch.

After we finish up with lunch, it’s already progressing into mid afternoon. Lena and Emma are too tired to train anymore, and Olivia lets the two of them rest. Elsa spends time with Lena and Emma through the afternoon, and Paige does wake up and eat at least a little of the food that Ivy gave her.

The five of us elect to go through the gladiators dungeon another time, and being free of supervising Lena and Emma’s training, Olivia decides to come with us, making our team six.

The dungeon adjusts the difficulty accordingly, but can’t truly account for the increase in versatility from having another fighter, especially one as powerful as Olivia.

Olivia acts as a tank for Belle and I, giving us a bit of an easier time of working between each other to demolish the enemies. This time, we manage to beat the entire dungeon without losing anybody to fateweaving, a fact which I’m happy about.

The other nice upside to doing that, besides more loot, is the extra level I’ve gained by the end of it. It seems like every run through the waves dungeon, given that we make it through till the end, give about a level’s worth of XP, which is incredibly useful.

We all agree at the end that we’re too tired to do another dungeon run. There’s an argument to be made for Ivy and I pushing as hard as we can to grind out as many levels as we can, but we don’t want to tire ourselves out.

We still have the better part of three weeks of training left, and we have the fight of our lives at the end of it, so it’s much better to pace ourselves.

Checking our progress at the end of the day, we’re happy to find that in addition to Ivy and I levelling up twice (up to level 122), Belle has levelled up once, and to their pleasant surprise, so have Emma and Lena. Mia levelled up twice, and Skylar levelled up once, now both on level 92. Not bad all up, for a day’s training.

Belle seems a bit more comfortable around us now, which I’m happy about. She still doesn’t want to join my guild, but is at least capable of being friendly to us now and spending meal times with us, as shown when she also joins us for dinner. I’m hope she’ll warm up to us more with time.

Skylar spends some time in the library with Olivia, which is becoming a nightly routine for them. For an hour every night, they sit in the library by the fire, reading and chatting softly. Skylar says it helps them both relax.

Mia teases her about having a crush on our mentor, which Skylar deflects but interestingly doesn’t deny. I for one, am just glad Olivia isn’t separating herself from us.

Paige finally gets out of bed near dinner time, which we’re all really proud of her for. Skylar convinces us not to say anything about it to her though, so we keep our mouths shut. She eats silently at the table, and we try not to bother her, despite our concern for her mental state. After dinner, she goes for a walk outside, in the dark.

She doesn’t join us when we’re about to go to bed, and I’m about to go look for her, when Skylar stops me again. “Leave her be. I think she needs some time alone.” She tells me.

I’m not happy about it, but I let it go. Aside from being worried about Paige, I’m happy with how our day went. I fall asleep, trying not to think about the inevitable fight in a few weeks time.