"Hmm." Ouroboros looked over the crowd, other than Liz's party, the king, Barview and Ragnar - most of the soldiers were close to collapsing from the sheer fear they felt at the sight of their new enemy; and Ouroboros seemed to take great pleasure in this as shot a toothy grin at his prey, "No point in letting the kiddies stay up any later, is there?"
There was no warning for what came next, not even the slightest indication anything had happened beyond the slits of Ouroboros's eyes contracting by a tiny amount - but the results came as all of the remaining soldiers collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Just a cruel look from Ourobors was enough to send a wave of intimidation so strong it left only 6 people standing.
From there everything remained static for quite a while; Liz's side did not dare move, while Ouroboros had no reason to - instead choosing to bask in the fear he caused. Though such peace could not last forever.
An undead hound jumped from outside of Ouroboros's view, aiming to bite into the back of his head - but such an attack could never have worked. From his back, blood rushed out in the shape of a tentacle, a bulbous head splitting at its end to reveal what looked to be teeth made from crystalised blood. It caught the hound in its jaws, splitting it in two as it cut through the centre of its body like a warm knife through butter. Then, even before it hit the ground, the blood tentacle extended and another mouth caught the remaining pieces of flesh - devouring the entire beast in 2 bites.
Ouoboros grimaced after he finished his meal, the blood returning to his body instantly.
"I don't really like the undead, their souls just don't taste as good as regular mortals." He said, turning to face Liz; she staggered backwards under his gaze as unease built in her body, "I don't suppose you have something better."
Something about Liz's bravery awakened a fearlessness in the remaining fighters, they charged forwards under Ouroboros's mocking glare - they believed they may die there today, but to give in to their fear would be a worse fate than any other.
Ragnar was the first to arrive, his sword crashing down with the activation of [Dragonfall], purplish energy gathering as yet another dragon mirage manifested itself following Ragnar's blade. The sword clashed with Ouroboros's claws, pushing him back a few inches as sparks flew - the energy dispersed and Liz could see the scales on his body shake ever so slightly.
We have a chance! Liz thought, regaining all of her confidence - because a chance was more than enough for her.
The king was next, as he arrived while Ouroboros threw off Ragnar's attack with an irritated look - still slightly unbalanced he was unable to block the king's skill: [Royal Judgment] as it crashed into his abdomen and flung him backwards into a crowd of undead soldiers. Discomfort could be seen on the devil's face as he flew through the air, but before he even landed his figure was obscured by a burst of crystal blood spikes that shattered the skills of every soldier with perfect accuracy, even weaving around in order to hit the furthest targets. From there Ouroboros landed on his feet and glared horribly at all of the mortals who had dared to defy him.
"Fucking mortal body... Fucking Beelzebub..." He muttered under his breath, spitting both mortal and Beelzebub with palpable hatred.
Fortunately, his mumbling distracted him enough for an assassin to approach - his eyes caught the slightest movement to his left and his claws ran through a jester wielding a pair of crude looking knives. He lifted his hand in mockery as he had already killed one of the pitiful mortals that seemed to think their feeble efforts were worth something, the little kitty's blood dripping onto the floor
These look slightly different than I remember... Ouroboros thought as he paid closer attention to the knives in her hands; it was only when he felt a slash against his cheek that he realised - the catfolk in his hand dematerialised with a mocking grin, and to his left the real body of the impudent mortal shot him a wink before jumping back out of range of his attacks.
"I'm glad I increased that skill's level." She laughed, "The fake blood makes it seem extra real."
Ouroboros was now enraged, he had wanted to let these ants play out their fantasy of being great devil slayers - but this had gone too far. For such a whelp to not only have drawn his blood, but to mock him afterwards was unacceptable.
Despite being a gluttony devil, Ouroboros was not only exceptionally prideful, but also full of wrath and greed. In the past, Ouroboros had acted rashly, his inferiority complex pushing him to do something reckless that resulted in having his soul fractured and sealed; but he was still a devil, and to be injured by mortals despite this infuriated him beyond belief.
It pains me to go this far for a few insects like these. Ouroboros thought as he glared at the mortals making a pathetic attempt to surround him. But their arrogance is far too high for me to allow them a painless death.
Mythic-Ranked races were not easy to define and even beings considered the same by the system could display widely different capabilities; this was because of an ability gained at the mythic rank.
If Legendary-Rank could be said to grant immortality, Mythic-Rank would grant freedom. Mythic races were much harder to define in the traditional sense since the main aspect that determined one's race was their pool of racial skills, but almost all mythic-ranked beings had the innate quality to create their own racial skills - not by will, but the path of their ascension determined the progression of their race heading towards Godhood.
This of course held true for devils as well. The devils could be divided into 7 subraces, based on the sin skill gained upon manifestation; for gluttony devils this was of course [Gluttony], a skill allowing one to gain some of the power of anything they ate as some of the target's soul was syphoned into their own. But after this, racial skills would be gained through achievements, recognitions of power or feats.
In this way Ouroboros had become one of the most powerful haemokinetics alive, even when considering vampires. However, this power did not come from the precision of his control, but the volume of blood he utilised and the variety of that blood. Ouroboros had created the skill [Stomach of Blood], allowing him to store the blood of any creature he ate in an extra dimensional space he could access at will - and Ouroboros was old, old enough to watch entire dimensions be born and burn multiple times over. With this Ouroboros was able to gather so much blood that even Sanguine Vampires would be jealous at the sight of his stockpile. Of course he could not fully access the stockpile in his current body, but he would have more than enough to kill a few mortals.
This skill was the centrepiece of his power and he lamented at having been forced to use it here.
Ouroboros's eyes flicked across the mortals staring him down, they could clearly see they were outmatched, but it was infuriating that they somehow believed they had a chance at defeating him. However, there was one among them that showed some potential - potential he would have to destroy.
Liz had summoned the entirety of her forces, hundreds of undead all ready to pounce as the weaker, but largest force against the devil. They did not know what he was planning, but the undead would act as a perfect buffer for the assault.
With a single thought the summons charged: Skeletons rushed forward, their rusty armour rattling over their boney bodies; the emaciated flesh of the undead hounds weaving between their ranks; arrows and magic flying through the ballroom, hoping to crush the devil below; and finally the heavy bodies of golems bringing down the full force of their mountainous forms. And hidden within these creatures were the final 6 hopes of the Vradora kingdom.
Ouroboros looked indifferently at the wave of undead, lifting his arm nonchalantly above his head; from his hand came a rush of blood, spearing off in different directions with incredible speed. The attacks of the undead and golems were crushed in an instant as the blood became as sturdy as steel and crashed through them like a bus would ram through a plate of glass.
With that more than 90% of the undead fell instantly, but it allowed for another attack to get through.
From behind Gloria raised her axe and let loose a powerful attack. Using the axe's skill she expected it to send the devil flying as it previously had, but a shield of sizzling purple blood separated her axe from its target. Upon contact, Gloria's axe began to melt and disappear faster than Gloria could react. It was only by twisting her ankle unnaturally that she was able to save the other side of her weapon, but having slightly injured herself Gloria was now open for attack.
The shield quickly shifted into a large hammer that began to descend upon Gloria - it was only as a large snake constricted around her waist and was roughly pulled away that she escaped her death. The floor however, disappeared completely to reveal a gaping hole in the palace ballroom.
The snake was of course marquise Barview having seen his ally being called upon by the reaper he acted along with Ragnar to pull her to safety.
"The blood changed." Gloria said, looking down at her now 1-bladed axe, "It seems he can change the properties of the blood he controls."
"That makes things harder." The king replied, looking over to see that Smokey had not yet completed resummoning her undead so a surprise attack would be considerably harder, "Ragnar."
"Understood." Ragnar replied as he charged forward, his body blurring from the speed of his approach. He brandished his sword only for Ouroboros to scoff and swat it away with one of his claws, but Ragnar did not relent as he utilised the lost momentum of the parry to spin and increase his power. Along with the use of the skill [Dragon Manifestation] even Ouroboros had to dig in to prevent himself from being thrown away.
Blood gathered in the form of a shield to reinforce his defence as an energy dragon clashed into him with the force of a thousand blades. In his attempt to block his front, he had left his back exposed, allowing for the king to approach and use his [Royal Judgement] skill once again - yet he was not as open as he led them to believe.
His head spun with a wicked grin as the king dug his feet in for the attack as blood gathered at the tip of his tail, a blade that then pierced through the stomach of the king. The force of the attack knocked king Geoffrey backwards, almost falling to the floor as pain ran through his body.
Ragnar and Barview screamed out in shock, their liege being heavily injured was in no way part of the plan.
"I'm fine!" He called out, blood dripping from his mouth as he drank what looked to be a potion - the wound stopped bleeding, but it was certainly not fully healed.
"Hahahahaha!" Ouroboros laughed as he pushed Ragnar back by slamming him in the chest with blood, "Sure you are! Consider yourself lucky I didn't use the zargarian bloodfor that one - one final mercy for the previous owner of my new domain."
He laughed raucously, his hand reaching out to grab a bone spear flying towards him. However, he didn't expect to lose his footing and skid back more than 5 metres, the furthest he had been pushed so far. The spear dematerialised at that and blood began to seep from wounds in his hands - incredibly deep wounds that were gushing blood like a raging river.
The fun he was having only moments ago after claiming the upper hand was gone in an instant. His arrogance had once again caused him to think himself superior to everything here and he had gotten injured once again.
Looking over the little necromancer was staring at him, but only as even more bone spears came flying towards him. 8 bone spears flew at impossible speeds that Ouroboros's mortal body could not reasonably dodge them, and the shields of blood did not stop all 8 - some shields cracked under the force while others flit through the gap and pierced into the parts of his skin that were not protected by scales.
"AAAARRRRGGGHHH!" Ouroboros screamed, not in pain, but anger as blood erupted from his back - thousands of droplets of multicoloured blood floating just behind him until finally gathering together to form the shape of wings. Blood rained down from the wounds he had been given, but they only served as ammunition as he flew up into the air with his new wings.
With each drop of blood arrows of blood rained down into the ballroom, from both his wounds and wings - gradually decreasing in size as they did.
"Gather!" Ragnar called out, the others rushing to him, most sustaining injury as blood arrows dug into their flesh - only Liz, thanks to her [Voodooist] skill and Nina thanks to her [Acrobatics] skill were able to arrive unscathed. Once they did, Ragnar activated [Dragon Storm] a large barrier forming around them - but it was not enough to stop the barrage of attacks, the blood piercing through the veil of dragons all the same, if slightly weakened.
From there Barview took a stance - activating his skill [Partial Shift] to change his arms into those of both a bull and a bear as well as increasing in size. [Partial Shift] allowed Barview to change parts of his body into animal form with lower power, but in return there was no time limit or mana cost after the initial shift.
Blood dripped from Barview as his increased size blocked all of incoming blood spears, but as the attack began to slow Barview was not able to perceive the danger hidden among the blood.
A spear of sizzling black blood pierced cleanly through the barrier, not slowing at all as it headed directly for Barview. His instincts warned him of something coming close, allowing him to see the black arrow at the very last moment and swing his hand, throwing the arrow slightly off course as it dug a hole clean through his flesh. But it did not stop there.
The barrage stopped and the barrier dispersed as Barview fell to the floor screaming in agony. Gloria looked at the wound, flesh dissolving into black mist as Barview's arm began to disappear from both sides of the hole in his arm - she acted quickly, cutting of his arm entirely
As it fell to the ground, Barivew's pain seemed to lessen as he watched his right arm disappear into nothing but black mist.
"T-Thanks..." He groaned, Gloria only nodded.
They all looked up, Ouroboros glaring at them with a wicked grin; mocking the pain of their ally. Looking over to the side, a large number of the unconscious soldiers had been killed in the attack.
"We need to end this." The king said resolutely, glaring right back at Ouroboros - all fear replaced by hatred for the monster before him.
A plan was created in an instant, right as Ouroboros raised his hand to spew even more blood - firing them like bullets. Gloria activated her skill [Inevitable Demise], taking the lead as her enhanced abilities allowed her to plow straight through the bullets and arrive at Ouroboros incredibly quickly.
As she raised her axe once again he scoffed, creating yet another barrier - using her skills Gloria was able to crack the shield, but nothing more; of course this was expected.
Undead exploded from behind Gloria, including the zombies of the dead soldiers - these would have been exterminated just as they had been before, but the scale was much different and even a minor lapse in judgement would result in allowing for the raging bone slayer to cut into him.
Undead piled upon Ouroboros, their pathetic attempt to pin him down working slightly as they were destroyed at a slower pace than they had been previously.
In his anger, Ouroboros let out a burst of blood, pushing everything away from himself. He seemed slightly more uncomfortable than before - seemingly using too much blood, but right as he seemed to be at his weakest his arm moved impossibly fast to catch the little assassin jumping through the air.
He grinned his macabre grin as he stared at the struggling cat in his grip, just a single thought and his blood would cut this impudent mortal to pieces - but he could see they were desperate and this was their final attempt at a win; he wanted to rub it in that they had failed.
"Hahahaha! Was this really your final gambit!?" He laughed wildly as Nina struggled in his grip, "You've been giving me trouble for quite a while, but this is a bit disappointing - especially from someone with some control over souls."
"I'm gonna enjoy devouring this entire kingdom - starting with the little kitty and her ridiculous friends- "
Ouroboros's rant was cut short as a horrible pain rang through his neck - in front of him were the golden and black haired mortals, flicking blood from their blades as they sheathed them and looked back with disdain. Then the world began to shift, falling sideways.
Ouroboros's head had been severed - a devil beheaded.
"It's over..." The king panted through bated breaths, "The nightmare is over."
And so the 6 mortals allowed for a smile to blood - Nina falling out of Ouroboros's grip as his body, still upright, loosened its muscles to let go.
Each turned away; heading to find any survivors among the unconscious guards when a thought ran through Liz's mind, stopping her in her tracks:
The quest isn't over yet!
*Clap* *Clap* *Clap* *Clap* -
She spun in horror, the others mirroring the action as the headless body slowly began to clap.
"Hahahahaha!" That same horrible laughter began again, "Did you really think that was it?! This is why mortals can never win!"
"They're just not smart enough!"
Blood erupted from the body's neck, like a crimson geyser - before spinning into a number of tendrils that extended at impossible speeds to claim the former head of Archduke Kilgard.
The head was lifted, the tendrils of blood digging into the flesh as it was brought back to the body. As the head was placed upon the neck the wound, having been dripping with blood only a few seconds ago, sealed instantly.
"I suppose you were somewhat right though." Ouroboros mocked, "This nightmare is about to be over for you."
His grin widened even further as blood shot out from all over his entire body - large teeth revealing themselves within the tentacles of blood whipping around Ouroboros's main body.
"I'm even going to give you the pleasure of being killed with gluttony."
"Now let's end this."
He only laughed as tentacles of blood began to move - hungry for the souls of the mortal who had dared to dream of his defeat.
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"Hmm." Ouroboros looked over the crowd, other than Liz's party, the king, Barview and Ragnar - most of the soldiers were close to collapsing from the sheer fear they felt at the sight of their new enemy; and Ouroboros seemed to take great pleasure in this as shot a toothy grin at his prey, "No point in letting the kiddies stay up any later, is there?"
There was no warning for what came next, not even the slightest indication anything had happened beyond the slits of Ouroboros's eyes contracting by a tiny amount - but the results came as all of the remaining soldiers collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Just a cruel look from Ourobors was enough to send a wave of intimidation so strong it left only 6 people standing.
From there everything remained static for quite a while; Liz's side did not dare move, while Ouroboros had no reason to - instead choosing to bask in the fear he caused. Though such peace could not last forever.
An undead hound jumped from outside of Ouroboros's view, aiming to bite into the back of his head - but such an attack could never have worked. From his back, blood rushed out in the shape of a tentacle, a bulbous head splitting at its end to reveal what looked to be teeth made from crystalised blood. It caught the hound in its jaws, splitting it in two as it cut through the centre of its body like a warm knife through butter. Then, even before it hit the ground, the blood tentacle extended and another mouth caught the remaining pieces of flesh - devouring the entire beast in 2 bites.
Ouoboros grimaced after he finished his meal, the blood returning to his body instantly.
"I don't really like the undead, their souls just don't taste as good as regular mortals." He said, turning to face Liz; she staggered backwards under his gaze as unease built in her body, "I don't suppose you have something better."
Something about Liz's bravery awakened a fearlessness in the remaining fighters, they charged forwards under Ouroboros's mocking glare - they believed they may die there today, but to give in to their fear would be a worse fate than any other.
Ragnar was the first to arrive, his sword crashing down with the activation of [Dragonfall], purplish energy gathering as yet another dragon mirage manifested itself following Ragnar's blade. The sword clashed with Ouroboros's claws, pushing him back a few inches as sparks flew - the energy dispersed and Liz could see the scales on his body shake ever so slightly.
We have a chance! Liz thought, regaining all of her confidence - because a chance was more than enough for her.
The king was next, as he arrived while Ouroboros threw off Ragnar's attack with an irritated look - still slightly unbalanced he was unable to block the king's skill: [Royal Judgment] as it crashed into his abdomen and flung him backwards into a crowd of undead soldiers. Discomfort could be seen on the devil's face as he flew through the air, but before he even landed his figure was obscured by a burst of crystal blood spikes that shattered the skills of every soldier with perfect accuracy, even weaving around in order to hit the furthest targets. From there Ouroboros landed on his feet and glared horribly at all of the mortals who had dared to defy him.
"Fucking mortal body... Fucking Beelzebub..." He muttered under his breath, spitting both mortal and Beelzebub with palpable hatred.
Fortunately, his mumbling distracted him enough for an assassin to approach - his eyes caught the slightest movement to his left and his claws ran through a jester wielding a pair of crude looking knives. He lifted his hand in mockery as he had already killed one of the pitiful mortals that seemed to think their feeble efforts were worth something, the little kitty's blood dripping onto the floor
These look slightly different than I remember... Ouroboros thought as he paid closer attention to the knives in her hands; it was only when he felt a slash against his cheek that he realised - the catfolk in his hand dematerialised with a mocking grin, and to his left the real body of the impudent mortal shot him a wink before jumping back out of range of his attacks.
"I'm glad I increased that skill's level." She laughed, "The fake blood makes it seem extra real."
Ouroboros was now enraged, he had wanted to let these ants play out their fantasy of being great devil slayers - but this had gone too far. For such a whelp to not only have drawn his blood, but to mock him afterwards was unacceptable.
Despite being a gluttony devil, Ouroboros was not only exceptionally prideful, but also full of wrath and greed. In the past, Ouroboros had acted rashly, his inferiority complex pushing him to do something reckless that resulted in having his soul fractured and sealed; but he was still a devil, and to be injured by mortals despite this infuriated him beyond belief.
It pains me to go this far for a few insects like these. Ouroboros thought as he glared at the mortals making a pathetic attempt to surround him. But their arrogance is far too high for me to allow them a painless death.
Mythic-Ranked races were not easy to define and even beings considered the same by the system could display widely different capabilities; this was because of an ability gained at the mythic rank.
If Legendary-Rank could be said to grant immortality, Mythic-Rank would grant freedom. Mythic races were much harder to define in the traditional sense since the main aspect that determined one's race was their pool of racial skills, but almost all mythic-ranked beings had the innate quality to create their own racial skills - not by will, but the path of their ascension determined the progression of their race heading towards Godhood.
This of course held true for devils as well. The devils could be divided into 7 subraces, based on the sin skill gained upon manifestation; for gluttony devils this was of course [Gluttony], a skill allowing one to gain some of the power of anything they ate as some of the target's soul was syphoned into their own. But after this, racial skills would be gained through achievements, recognitions of power or feats.
In this way Ouroboros had become one of the most powerful haemokinetics alive, even when considering vampires. However, this power did not come from the precision of his control, but the volume of blood he utilised and the variety of that blood. Ouroboros had created the skill [Stomach of Blood], allowing him to store the blood of any creature he ate in an extra dimensional space he could access at will - and Ouroboros was old, old enough to watch entire dimensions be born and burn multiple times over. With this Ouroboros was able to gather so much blood that even Sanguine Vampires would be jealous at the sight of his stockpile. Of course he could not fully access the stockpile in his current body, but he would have more than enough to kill a few mortals.
This skill was the centrepiece of his power and he lamented at having been forced to use it here.
Ouroboros's eyes flicked across the mortals staring him down, they could clearly see they were outmatched, but it was infuriating that they somehow believed they had a chance at defeating him. However, there was one among them that showed some potential - potential he would have to destroy.
Liz had summoned the entirety of her forces, hundreds of undead all ready to pounce as the weaker, but largest force against the devil. They did not know what he was planning, but the undead would act as a perfect buffer for the assault.
With a single thought the summons charged: Skeletons rushed forward, their rusty armour rattling over their boney bodies; the emaciated flesh of the undead hounds weaving between their ranks; arrows and magic flying through the ballroom, hoping to crush the devil below; and finally the heavy bodies of golems bringing down the full force of their mountainous forms. And hidden within these creatures were the final 6 hopes of the Vradora kingdom.
Ouroboros looked indifferently at the wave of undead, lifting his arm nonchalantly above his head; from his hand came a rush of blood, spearing off in different directions with incredible speed. The attacks of the undead and golems were crushed in an instant as the blood became as sturdy as steel and crashed through them like a bus would ram through a plate of glass.
With that more than 90% of the undead fell instantly, but it allowed for another attack to get through.
From behind Gloria raised her axe and let loose a powerful attack. Using the axe's skill she expected it to send the devil flying as it previously had, but a shield of sizzling purple blood separated her axe from its target. Upon contact, Gloria's axe began to melt and disappear faster than Gloria could react. It was only by twisting her ankle unnaturally that she was able to save the other side of her weapon, but having slightly injured herself Gloria was now open for attack.
The shield quickly shifted into a large hammer that began to descend upon Gloria - it was only as a large snake constricted around her waist and was roughly pulled away that she escaped her death. The floor however, disappeared completely to reveal a gaping hole in the palace ballroom.
The snake was of course marquise Barview having seen his ally being called upon by the reaper he acted along with Ragnar to pull her to safety.
"The blood changed." Gloria said, looking down at her now 1-bladed axe, "It seems he can change the properties of the blood he controls."
"That makes things harder." The king replied, looking over to see that Smokey had not yet completed resummoning her undead so a surprise attack would be considerably harder, "Ragnar."
"Understood." Ragnar replied as he charged forward, his body blurring from the speed of his approach. He brandished his sword only for Ouroboros to scoff and swat it away with one of his claws, but Ragnar did not relent as he utilised the lost momentum of the parry to spin and increase his power. Along with the use of the skill [Dragon Manifestation] even Ouroboros had to dig in to prevent himself from being thrown away.
Blood gathered in the form of a shield to reinforce his defence as an energy dragon clashed into him with the force of a thousand blades. In his attempt to block his front, he had left his back exposed, allowing for the king to approach and use his [Royal Judgement] skill once again - yet he was not as open as he led them to believe.
His head spun with a wicked grin as the king dug his feet in for the attack as blood gathered at the tip of his tail, a blade that then pierced through the stomach of the king. The force of the attack knocked king Geoffrey backwards, almost falling to the floor as pain ran through his body.
Ragnar and Barview screamed out in shock, their liege being heavily injured was in no way part of the plan.
"I'm fine!" He called out, blood dripping from his mouth as he drank what looked to be a potion - the wound stopped bleeding, but it was certainly not fully healed.
"Hahahahaha!" Ouroboros laughed as he pushed Ragnar back by slamming him in the chest with blood, "Sure you are! Consider yourself lucky I didn't use the zargarian bloodfor that one - one final mercy for the previous owner of my new domain."
He laughed raucously, his hand reaching out to grab a bone spear flying towards him. However, he didn't expect to lose his footing and skid back more than 5 metres, the furthest he had been pushed so far. The spear dematerialised at that and blood began to seep from wounds in his hands - incredibly deep wounds that were gushing blood like a raging river.
The fun he was having only moments ago after claiming the upper hand was gone in an instant. His arrogance had once again caused him to think himself superior to everything here and he had gotten injured once again.
Looking over the little necromancer was staring at him, but only as even more bone spears came flying towards him. 8 bone spears flew at impossible speeds that Ouroboros's mortal body could not reasonably dodge them, and the shields of blood did not stop all 8 - some shields cracked under the force while others flit through the gap and pierced into the parts of his skin that were not protected by scales.
"AAAARRRRGGGHHH!" Ouroboros screamed, not in pain, but anger as blood erupted from his back - thousands of droplets of multicoloured blood floating just behind him until finally gathering together to form the shape of wings. Blood rained down from the wounds he had been given, but they only served as ammunition as he flew up into the air with his new wings.
With each drop of blood arrows of blood rained down into the ballroom, from both his wounds and wings - gradually decreasing in size as they did.
"Gather!" Ragnar called out, the others rushing to him, most sustaining injury as blood arrows dug into their flesh - only Liz, thanks to her [Voodooist] skill and Nina thanks to her [Acrobatics] skill were able to arrive unscathed. Once they did, Ragnar activated [Dragon Storm] a large barrier forming around them - but it was not enough to stop the barrage of attacks, the blood piercing through the veil of dragons all the same, if slightly weakened.
From there Barview took a stance - activating his skill [Partial Shift] to change his arms into those of both a bull and a bear as well as increasing in size. [Partial Shift] allowed Barview to change parts of his body into animal form with lower power, but in return there was no time limit or mana cost after the initial shift.
Blood dripped from Barview as his increased size blocked all of incoming blood spears, but as the attack began to slow Barview was not able to perceive the danger hidden among the blood.
A spear of sizzling black blood pierced cleanly through the barrier, not slowing at all as it headed directly for Barview. His instincts warned him of something coming close, allowing him to see the black arrow at the very last moment and swing his hand, throwing the arrow slightly off course as it dug a hole clean through his flesh. But it did not stop there.
The barrage stopped and the barrier dispersed as Barview fell to the floor screaming in agony. Gloria looked at the wound, flesh dissolving into black mist as Barview's arm began to disappear from both sides of the hole in his arm - she acted quickly, cutting of his arm entirely
As it fell to the ground, Barivew's pain seemed to lessen as he watched his right arm disappear into nothing but black mist.
"T-Thanks..." He groaned, Gloria only nodded.
They all looked up, Ouroboros glaring at them with a wicked grin; mocking the pain of their ally. Looking over to the side, a large number of the unconscious soldiers had been killed in the attack.
"We need to end this." The king said resolutely, glaring right back at Ouroboros - all fear replaced by hatred for the monster before him.
A plan was created in an instant, right as Ouroboros raised his hand to spew even more blood - firing them like bullets. Gloria activated her skill [Inevitable Demise], taking the lead as her enhanced abilities allowed her to plow straight through the bullets and arrive at Ouroboros incredibly quickly.
As she raised her axe once again he scoffed, creating yet another barrier - using her skills Gloria was able to crack the shield, but nothing more; of course this was expected.
Undead exploded from behind Gloria, including the zombies of the dead soldiers - these would have been exterminated just as they had been before, but the scale was much different and even a minor lapse in judgement would result in allowing for the raging bone slayer to cut into him.
Undead piled upon Ouroboros, their pathetic attempt to pin him down working slightly as they were destroyed at a slower pace than they had been previously.
In his anger, Ouroboros let out a burst of blood, pushing everything away from himself. He seemed slightly more uncomfortable than before - seemingly using too much blood, but right as he seemed to be at his weakest his arm moved impossibly fast to catch the little assassin jumping through the air.
He grinned his macabre grin as he stared at the struggling cat in his grip, just a single thought and his blood would cut this impudent mortal to pieces - but he could see they were desperate and this was their final attempt at a win; he wanted to rub it in that they had failed.
"Hahahaha! Was this really your final gambit!?" He laughed wildly as Nina struggled in his grip, "You've been giving me trouble for quite a while, but this is a bit disappointing - especially from someone with some control over souls."
"I'm gonna enjoy devouring this entire kingdom - starting with the little kitty and her ridiculous friends- "
Ouroboros's rant was cut short as a horrible pain rang through his neck - in front of him were the golden and black haired mortals, flicking blood from their blades as they sheathed them and looked back with disdain. Then the world began to shift, falling sideways.
Ouroboros's head had been severed - a devil beheaded.
"It's over..." The king panted through bated breaths, "The nightmare is over."
And so the 6 mortals allowed for a smile to blood - Nina falling out of Ouroboros's grip as his body, still upright, loosened its muscles to let go.
Each turned away; heading to find any survivors among the unconscious guards when a thought ran through Liz's mind, stopping her in her tracks:
The quest isn't over yet!
*Clap* *Clap* *Clap* *Clap* -
She spun in horror, the others mirroring the action as the headless body slowly began to clap.
"Hahahahaha!" That same horrible laughter began again, "Did you really think that was it?! This is why mortals can never win!"
"They're just not smart enough!"
Blood erupted from the body's neck, like a crimson geyser - before spinning into a number of tendrils that extended at impossible speeds to claim the former head of Archduke Kilgard.
The head was lifted, the tendrils of blood digging into the flesh as it was brought back to the body. As the head was placed upon the neck the wound, having been dripping with blood only a few seconds ago, sealed instantly.
"I suppose you were somewhat right though." Ouroboros mocked, "This nightmare is about to be over for you."
His grin widened even further as blood shot out from all over his entire body - large teeth revealing themselves within the tentacles of blood whipping around Ouroboros's main body.
"I'm even going to give you the pleasure of being killed with gluttony."
"Now let's end this."
He only laughed as tentacles of blood began to move - hungry for the souls of the mortal who had dared to dream of his defeat.
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