Guardian 2.11

Once my spirits surrounded him, I had my permanent spirit come closer to me. Lung fought ferociously with flaming hands and legs, perhaps having come to the conclusion that the spirits couldn't be harmed by either fire or regular attacks alone, but could from a combined attack. He was wrong, but it wasn't a bad choice either, since the flames did increase the damage.

I watched briefly as the three spirits seem to get the upper hand momentarily by outnumbering Lung and attacking madly without regard for themselves, whereas Lung tried to dodge and block where he could.

With a mental order, I had the spirits try to grab onto Lung and wrestle him instead of attacking at will. Then I rushed over myself.

They'd managed to trip him up and get him onto the ground when I got there, and struck towards his head with my staff at full strength.

But before I even hit him, he exploded in a massive fireball. I flinched and tried to guard my face at the last second while jumping back, though I kept the Guardian Spirits on him. They ignored the 1 HP fire damage and simply continued to hold him down, and apparently he wasn't quite strong enough to throw them off yet, not when there were multiple of them. That would probably change soon though, because he was getting visibly larger and now looked half reptilian already.

The fire hit me, but didn't manage to damage me, nor did it burn my enchanted clothes. I rushed back in and aimed for his head again before he could get too strong, this time my staff reached its mark, but unfortunately other than a pained grunt it didn't do anything to him. He twisted and roared in rage as the spirits held him with his face to the ground piled on top of him each one using their bodies and two arms to hold down one of his limbs, while getting in some minor attacks where they could.

I knocked him on the head six more times, which saw his HP cut to 7 at the lowest point, before he kicked one of the spirits away. Not one of my strikes managed to Stun him, or if it did, it wasn't enough to knock him out of the fight. I let all my spirits loose to attack him again.

His attack and defense were up to 10 now, his head was bleeding profusely but he was recovering HP, while my spirits didn't seem to be doing damage anymore.

My own attack was 6 plus 2 from Holy Weapon which also stacked onto the Staff's base bringing it up to 4 from 2. How exactly my personal attack stat affected the output of a weapon-based attack was a bit of a mystery to me, but it seemed that I was still able to damage Lung, with each of my own strikes using the metal ankh at the end of the staff tearing off scales and finding his flesh.

Suddenly I was struck by a kick that sent me crashing into a wall, which broke under the force, creating an explosion of debris. My vision swam as Lung came for me, apparently having punched away all my spirits.

I pointed my staff at him and launched a basic mana bolt for 2 MP, which was really just concentrated mana solidified with an intent to harm and hit something. I had no ranged magic attack bonus on the staff so I didn't expect much, but it being a new and unknown attack, he dodged it, giving me a chance to stand back up and run. I headed south, towards the city center where Armsmaster should be arriving from.

My HP only went down by 1 from despite the pain, which was rather amazing. It was not enough damage to be worth using Heal on myself yet, so I didn't bother.

He chased me down the street but with my doubled running speed on top of an already high speed stat and enhanced kick strength from the attack stat, I was able to stay ahead. Though Lung was hot on my tail, literally.

fireballs passing me by harmlessly as I saw them coming without turning my head thanks to my familiar that was flying high in the air, though some detonated against the walls and glass of the buildings on the two sides of the street.

As I led Lung away, my permanent summon went to pick up and move the unconscious gangsters to an alleyway and gather their weapons, while the other three dispelled again. They'd taken some damage and would still be damaged the next time I summoned them within twenty four hours, but this way I could instantly re-summon them at my side.

My dove rose higher in order to keep both the spirit and Lung in sight.

After running a couple of blocks I noticed that Lung's stats went down suddenly, and he didn't look like he was giving up on chasing me, so did that mean it was involuntary? What was it responding to, exactly? Did he have to be actively fighting for the transformation to keep going, or was it something I did?

As my dove rose higher, I suddenly noticed some large shadows leaping across rooftops, chasing after both Lung and me, and actually keeping up as well, though they were losing ground.

It was too dark to make out clearly what they were at such distance, but they looked a bit like large quadrupedal beasts, with smaller figures riding on them.

Then I recalled that according to the PHO wiki, the Undersiders had one member known as Hellhound, who commanded monster dogs.

Hmm. Why were they chasing us? I thought they were hiding from Lung. Did they come out to watch us, or did they decide to have a showdown before I got in the way?

Well if that was the case, why did I have to fight their fight for them? If I'd known they were there, I could have let the villains duke it out amongst themselves first and then swoop in to take them all out with the right opportunity.

It was with that thought in mind that I turned towards left on the next intersection, then found some ledges I could use to spring myself up, and leapt to the roof of the corner building. Lung didn't even bother with the ledges and made his own slamming his hands into the side wall, still hot on my tail. His stats had gone down another point, leaving him at 9 attack and defense, though his HP had healed all the way back to 16 out of 18.

The other figures that I'd tentatively assumed to be the Undersiders came to a hard stop, as I made a beeline right towards them.

I'd closed the gap significantly within the span of a few seconds while they seemed to be confused or didn't know how to respond to this development.

Then they turned tail and ran the other way. Oh come on, what was that? Weren't they eager to join the fight? I was doing them a favor, so why were they fleeing now? Well, I could hardly let them get away, so I charged onwards, gaining ground every second. Those big dogs were fast but they weren't good at maintaining their velocity between rooftops, having to re-accelerate after each jump, while both me and Lung were streaking across whole rooftops with one or two steps at a time.

"Stop chasing us! We aren't here to fight!" A young girl's shrill voice pierced the night.

"You dare to lob a dragon's hoourd, you will bay for your voolrishness!" Lung shouted back, having also realized who we were chasing.

We were only one building apart from each other, when I suddenly felt something in my leg, and almost tripped down a gap but caught myself just in time with my staff, and made the leap anyways, but still stumbled when I landed. Whew. Maybe I'd been going too fast and pulled a muscle.

Lung caught up to me in that moment, but he ignored me in favor of speeding towards the Undersiders.

I fired another mana bolt at him, which he dodged with a growl and responded with some fireballs. I ducked and weaved through them, staying head to head with Lung while getting closer to the monster dogs.

At this distance, it seemed close enough to be within my Combat Summoning range, so I went ahead and pointed my staff towards the teen villain group, and targeted the space in front of them for the magic circle.

"What the fuck?!" A deep gruffy voice cursed aloud, seemingly from the guy wearing a motorcycle helm, when the white circle blazed in the air.

A spirit rushed out, one of Hellhound's beasts slamming right into its arms, bringing it to a halt, its rider tumbling to the roof. The beast snarled angrily and bit into my spirit which fought back just as ferociously.

The [Enemy Unit] designation appeared over it as soon as its bite found my Unit, allowing me to see the beast's stats.

Hellhound's Monster Dog: [7 attack, 4 defense, 8 max health, 4 resistance, 4 speed]

"Shit!" The same girl's voice from earlier cursed as she passed by riding on a different beast, landing on the next roof over.

"Judas, Angelica, stop!"

Lung arrived on the scene with some angry words in another language, hurling large fireballs towards the two beasts on the next rooftop before going straight for the guy who'd fallen down and was scrambling to get back up.

I didn't know if that guy had any Brute powers to survive Lung so I whispered [Guardian Spirit] again and set my magic circle right above him, the second spirit coming out to meet Lung.

The three other teen villains got off their rides, then one of them, a girl who wore a cheap dog mask placed fingers to her mouth and whistled, before shouting a command. Hellhound, probably.

"Kill!" Hah! Bet that was a weakness just like my chants, and I knew exactly how to deal with somebody who used verbal triggers for stuff.

"Bitch, wait! Don't send both—" The other girl shouted, but it was too late.

The beasts leapt back to our rooftop, and my third spirit appeared behind them, and restrained Hellhound, who struggled but had nowhere near the strength to fight back. I had the spirit cover her mouth to stop her from giving commands.

Lung threw off my spirit, but was met by the two new beasts. I joined the fray mostly targeting Lung but also aiming at the beasts' heads where I could. Chunks of bloody flesh, fire, and white misty parts flew around in a cacophony of angry roars and howls, while I ordered my permanent guardian spirit to make its way over here from the next street over, and the two free Undersiders tried to pry the one spirit off of Hellhound to no avail.

What followed after could only be described as a confused mess of brawling in the midst of a burning hurricane, made worse by how it kept getting darker for some reason despite Lung's fire, until I could barely see what was happening around me.

From my dove's perspective, it looked like the whole area was turning into a blanket of darkness that was fast spreading.

Was this a power? Outside the dark area, I saw a figure racing towards us on a motorbike. Armored, too, probably Armsmaster.

Then fire exploded everywhere, but it was muted, as if the light from the fire was being suppressed by something. That had to be a power then.

Soon I could no longer see anything more than a foot in front of me where the light from the tip of my staff illuminated, and I could barely hear anything either. There was a momentary flash of dim fire, in which I saw figures leaping off the rooftop, probably Lung trying to get out of the darkness and the beasts following him.

I went in the same direction, but then hit something midway. Then I was swinging and got slashed by something and tackled and—ugh, lost another point of HP—then suddenly found myself stepping on empty air, and falling.

I hit the ground, flat on my face, and lost my grip on my staff. The light on it went out because I wasn't wielding it anymore.

Shit. I couldn't see anything at all from my main body.

I swept out with my hands on the ground, trying to get my staff back.

The last of the street that I saw from my dove was Armsmaster getting off his bike and then getting caught in the expanding smoke too.

A hint of orange caught my attention again, from around where I thought Armsmaster was. Were they fighting? How could they see anything in this darkness?

Even with my holy light aura I was practically blind except for what was immediately next to me. Still, that was enough to find my staff after a while. Good thing it wasn't perfectly cylindrical, so it couldn't roll very far.

I found my way to a wall and simply leaned against it for a while, thinking of what to do. At this point it didn't seem like I had anything that could take down Lung, so unless Armsmaster had some way of doing it, this was a hopeless fight. I could understand a bit now how Lung managed to fight off whole teams of heroes in the past.

My combat summoned guardian spirits probably weren't in great shape either, I didn't even know if they were still alive or not. And since I couldn't see them, I couldn't even dispel them either. My last one, the permanent one, was making its way over but I made it stop while I thought of a plan.

Maybe I ought to just call it a night? No, I couldn't do that when Armsmaster was still fighting alone.

I sighed, only one last thing I could try in this situation.

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