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Log Horizon © Mamare Touno
This work provided under section 107 of the copyright act of 1978
Chapter 7
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Minori's gryphon suddenly rolled, tucking its wings in.
Shoryu and Minori, in their surprise, failed to hold on and were thrown from its back.
In movies and anime, a fall seems to take forever, dragging on long enough for characters to have extensive flashbacks and shout dramatically.
In reality, it takes a little under two and a half seconds to fall ten stories.
Shoryu, given the chance, would have spent that time screaming.
But Minori, remembering the overskill possessed by West Wind's Nazuna, quite literally prayed as she cast a Purification Barrier.
An orange, holographic disc appeared under them.
They bounced.
She cast a Protective Barrier, and the experience repeated itself.
She chained these two similar spells, switching from one to the other to give time for their cooldowns to pass.
By the time the pair made it to the ground, they had taken a minimum of collision damage, compared to simply suffering the fall.
As she pushed herself up, she could hear Krusty yelling in party chat about how BologneseMaster had about twenty four seconds before the Genius released its area of effect attack again.
In retrospect, Minori decided, she should have dismounted as soon as she saw the kneeling bystanders.
At least she knew the maximum range of the attack, though.
Shoryu, happy to be back on land, had his game face on.
"Minori, I'll give you a piggyback ride. I'm a lot faster than you are."
Minori's instinctive reaction to a rather roguish Swashbuckler offering to giver her a piggyback ride would have been to blush and argue, but now wasn't the time for that. She assented, got on his back, and he began running.
Swashbucklers weren't as fast as Monks or Assassins, and they didn't have the strength of Samurai or Guardians.
But Shoryu was still a far sight faster and stronger than her, and they covered the space of two city blocks in under thirty seconds.
She dropped off of Shoryu, and immediately started casting defensive barriers on the beleaguered Krusty and BologneseMaster.
Krusty kept the Genius's attention while BologneseMaster attacked from the sides and behind.
Viscera stained the street.
Krusty brought his war axe down over and over, but the monster's frail appearance belied its fearsome strength. And like everything else with an HP bar, the only fatal attack was the one that brought it to zero.
Shoryu made a move to assist Krusty.
"No! Get back!"
Shoryu stopped.
"Sᴜʙᴍɪᴛ. I ᴡɪʟʟ ɢʀᴀɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴊᴏʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇɴʟɪɢʜᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ."
Minori and Shoryu fell to their knees, an oppressive feeling overwhelming them.
They threw up.
Krusty stayed standing, gamely deflecting the monster's blow.
BologneseMaster jumped back down from the building he had taken cover on and re-entered the fight.
"Every thirty seconds," Minori whispered to herself.
Despite everyone having seemingly shaken off the monster's effects, Krusty informed her that each member of the party was now subject to an unknown, but steadily progressing status effect. By his calculations, she and Shoryu had about twelve minutes before succumbing to it. BologneseMaster had four. Krusty had two.
She cast Notice of Exorcism on Krusty.
"The status effect stayed, but it's progressing slower," Krusty told her.
Twenty seconds until she could cast Notice of Exorcism again..
"Shoryu, close in! Minori, focus on buffing him!"
Krusty commanded, and they obeyed.
Shoryu exploded forward.
The monster turned to face him.
"Anchor Howl!"
Krusty glowed green and forced the monster to focus on him.
Shoryu darted in, dual swords puncturing the monster's vitals.
Enraged, the Genius turned towards Shoryu and attacked.
This activated Anchor Howl's secondary effect.
With magically boosted speed, he smashed the flat of his axe into the monster.
The axe made the same sound as hitting meat with a rolling pin, and the Genius was thrown like a ragdoll across the street, hitting a lightpost so hard it bent.
Fifteen seconds until the Genius used its primary attack.
To add insult to injury BologneseMaster chose that time to activate Deadly Dance, hitting the downed Genius with eight consecutive strikes over as many seconds, each strike leaving a more distinct glowing trail as the damage multiplied.
While he did so, Minori cast Notice of Exorcism on BologneseMaster.
"Sᴜʙᴍɪᴛ. I ᴡɪʟʟ ɢʀᴀɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴊᴏʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇɴʟɪɢʜᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ."
Minori weathered this attack better than the last, if only because her stomach was already empty.
"The effect of Minori's spell has been reversed." Krusty's voice was grim. "I have a little more than thirty seconds left."
Krusty had some time to act, but Minori knew the monster's attack would be completing the status effect the next time it happened.
They had a significant health advantage, but she could guess what the status effect would do, and believed their health advantage would soon be more of a hindrance than a benefit.
Krusty, evidently, had the same idea.
"Shoryu, BM, switch your focus to damaging me!"
Neither looked happy about it, but complied with their party leader's order.
Krusty activated the ability of his Berserker subclass, Lunatic armor.
His health depleted at a frightening pace, but the Genius's health depleted in kind.
But Krusty's health was still in the green, his frightening Guardian constitution keeping him alive.
Minori frantically thought through her options. She had Prayer of the Soul to revive a fallen party member, and hadn't used Prayer to the Four Corners, her ultimate defensive ability. Neither helped deal damage, however, and neither would remove the status condition.
She paused thinking long enough to cast Notice of Excorcism on BologneseMaster.
The realization hit that Shoryu and BologneseMaster wouldn't kill Krusty before he fell under the status effect's sway, taking into account how the Genius would worsen his condition.
Then, if she was right about him switching sides, he'd simply have to activate defensive abilities long enough for BolongeseMaster to fall sway to the Genius, and then she'd lose.
She didn't have Shiroe to pull a Deus ex Machina. She didn't have her guildmates backing her up.
She was a little girl with delusions of grandeur and a fancy set of robes..
She rose her staff, preparing to delay the inevitable.
No.
She switched her target from BologneseMaster to Krusty.
"Notice of Exorcism!"
"Sᴜʙᴍɪᴛ. I ᴡɪʟʟ ɢʀᴀɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴊᴏʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇɴʟɪɢʜᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ."
It was a difference of one second.
Her spell delayed Krusty's status condition long enough for him to die at the hands of Shoryu.
But to her surprise, he didn't fall.
"Attack it! Second Rage only gives me ten seconds!"
Even Minori joined into the assault.
But contrary to their expectations, the Genius didn't continue to defend itself..
Instead, it chose to retreat.
Even as Krusty chased it, Minori knew he wouldn't reach it in time.
Krusty fell, his ten seconds expired.
Shoryu and BologneseMaster harassed it, but without Krusty, the monster easily beat them back.
Minori ran, then halted.
She needed to start reviving Krusty immediately, or he'd be forced to respawn in Akihabara's cathedral because she would be forced back to Akihabara before completing her spell... At least the progress of the status effect seemed to slow as the monster grew more distant.
But the monster was heading towards the highway, and she could barely imagine the havoc it could cause if it hitched a ride to a part of Japan she couldn't easily reach.
But what could she do if she caught it, when three above-level-90 adventurers hadn't done enough damage to destroy it?
Wait.
The highway.
Minori readied her staff.
Using her Scribe abilities, she recalled an anatomy book she had read with almost photographic clarity.
A human (or in this case, human-like) torso was approximately twenty to thirty centimeters long.
From experience, she knew that Japanese highways had speed limits of 100 kilometers per hour.
It would take a car one hundredth of a second to cross that distance.
What she planned would have been flatly impossible to do without fatalities for an ordinary human.
Of course, she wasn't.
The Genius paused at the edge of the highway, then stepped onto it and began running, trying to intercept a semi truck.
It jumped onto the front of the truck, underneath the driver's line of sight.
"Prayer to the Four Quarters!"
Black, red, white and blue barriers arranged into a rectangular prism, blinked into, and rapidly out of, existence.
Like before, when she'd used barriers to slow her fall, the barriers impacted the monster's back.
This time, however, the barriers didn't give. The monster was splattered across every lane of traffic, as it inadvertently found itself sandwiched between an immovable object and an unstoppable force.
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A/N: thank you to my beta, Mizu25!
