Jake braced himself as he prepared for the arrival of something that would definitely change the balance of the battle. He was attacked from all sides but still went on the offensive as he clashed with the Desolate Child of Loss in melee.
His Katar met the spear of desolation-infused bone, the katar winning out, but Jake still didn’t come out of it entirely unscathed as the creature released a shockwave of pure desolation that managed to partly penetrate his scales and into his body. He endured the unpleasant sensation as he successfully stabbed the creature in the stomach before exploding the weapon, forcing the False God away from himself.
Right on time, too.
A faint smile appeared on his lips right as the Desolate Child of Loss also noticed something was up. It looked up for a brief moment right before it was struck by what many would likely assume to be a meteorite.
With Jake’s extremely high Perception, he clearly saw what happened next. A Runemaiden, enveloped in flames created from having forcefully descended incredibly quickly and breaking through the atmosphere, smashed into the False God while clumsily landing a clothesline as she and the Desolate Child of Loss crashed toward the ground at truly meteoric speed.
The two of them smashing into each other released a shockwave of pure physical force that washed over Jake and even made some Holy Church members stumble, but it was nothing compared to the true touchdown. The wanna-be city was torn asunder as a crater formed right in the middle of it, destroying the majority of the many structures while creating large fissures that made what remained tumble and fall inwards toward the center of the crater.
In the middle of said crater, Jake saw a familiar figure rising as the Desolate Child of Loss was firmly embedded in the ground, a large indent in its mid-section from Carmen’s greeting. However, that wasn’t the most shocking thing.
In a world of monochrome black and white, Carmen remained entirely untouched as her blonde hair and glowing golden runes across her body created quite the sight.
Jake would have loved to keep a close watch of what happened next, but he had other eggs to crack as he smiled and looked toward the Holy Church members who needed a moment to understand what had just happened. A moment that Jake gladly cut short as he went on the offensive, this time no longer limited by having a False God up in his face, weakening him with desolation all the time.
Truthfully, he still had some doubts if Carmen could truly handle the Desolate Child of Loss. She was strong, yes, but the False God was no simple opponent. It was a being that had defeated Sylphie and the Fallen King, and while he had been told Carmen was suited to face it, Jake remained skeptical. He did know how durable she was from all their spars, and based on how she looked like a golden lighthouse in a sea of desolation, he reckoned she was able to counter it at least somewhat.Hopefully, no matter what, she would at least be able to hold on until Jake got done cleaning house – or Church in this instance - after which he would come to her assistance... at least, those were his thoughts. His misguided, poor, if well-intentioned, thoughts...
Carmen felt pretty damn hot standing over the Desolate Child of Loss.
No, not hot like that, in the literal sense. She had just been on fire a few seconds earlier, having brutishly broken through all the layers of the sky by force and set herself ablaze in the process. Still, she had gone a lot faster than she thought she could, and what’s more, with an assist from Jake even hit a pretty damn solid opening strike on the feared False God she was only now fully realizing she was there to fight.
Now it made a lot more sense why the Augur had said she should be there, though.
The desolation was all around her as she stood there, and she felt it in the environment as her body responded, making the runes light up all over her body. Looking down, she saw that despite the awesomeness of Carmen’s initial opening attack, the creature quickly reacted as it screamed and lunged up toward her, trying to grab her feet and inflict its desolation.
Carmen responded by stomping it on the chest, deeping the crater further in the process. Before she could stomp a second time, a wave of desolation turned all the gray stone around them into dust while allowing the creature to free itself.
A spear-like bone appeared in its hand as Carmen gladly sprung forward to meet the creature in melee. Rather than dodge, she directly struck the spear head-on, the entire thing crumbling before her fist the moment it made contact with her as a faint golden pulse echoed through her arm.
The creature looked confused as Carmen proceeded to punch it in the face, releasing a second golden echo, sending it spinning before she followed up with a kick, launching the creature away from the city before giving chase.
She wanted the thing out of the city and away from Jake and all the others, as that would definitely help Jake more than the Church due to the effectiveness of the Holy affinity against desolation.
Carmen already knew of the Desolate Child of Loss from the briefings of what had happened with the Fallen King, and as they had always considered it a possibility the creature was still alive, Carmen had wanted to know what she was dealing with if she ever encountered it.
The Fallen King hadn’t been someone she was close to, but the fact other people she cared about had been was enough to make her feel like this fight was personal. There had been some doubt, though. Knowing the False God had defeated not only the Unique Lifeform and Sylphie, as well as having pushed Jake and everyone else incredibly far when they came to try and save the two, she had wondered what she could even do.
That was until she learned what the False God truly was. When she later performed a ritual to contact her Patron, her worry was lessened even further, as in the words of Valdemar:
“You’re a Runemaiden! My Runemaiden! Just ignore that desolation stuff and punch it!”
Truly words of wisdom that Carmen would gladly live by.
Catching up to the False God in mid-air, Carmen engaged it in melee once more as she continued to push them further and further away from the city into the wide-open plains surrounding it. Once the domain of desolation no longer affected Jake and the Holy Church, Carmen caught a quite frankly horribly performed punch before throwing the Desolate Child of Loss over her shoulder and down toward the ground.
Giving chase, she tried to land a knee in the creature’s face, but the False God managed to get out of the way as it screamed again, a massive wave of desolation washing over her.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said carefree, diving straight through the wave before punching the creature in the stomach and elbowing it in the chin, sending it slightly airborne, only for her to catch its ankle and smash it into the ground face-first.
Twisting out of her grip, the Desolate Child of Loss jumped at her again, but Carmen easily dodged its attacks before landing several of her own. Every single punch sent shockwaves through the creature’s body, and it was clearly confused about what was happening.
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It tried to attack with another torrent of desolation that could instantly kill even some peak C-grades, but Carmen merely blocked it with her arms crossed in front of her face before pushing through and landing another powerful blow that sent the creature stumbling.
In a swift move, it managed to take Carmen slightly by surprise as it dove forward and put its sickly-looking hands on Carmen as they began to somehow turn even grayer. She remembered the reports of how deadly its touch was and how physical contact should be avoided... none of which applied to her. She gladly grabbed the hands on her and pulled the creature toward her before giving it a good headbutt, sending the False God away with a fractured skull before giving it a solid kick in the stomach, bending it over as something definite broke.
Annoyingly so, when she tried to continue her assault, the ground broke apart under her feet as she tried to shoot forward, the soil having become too brittle from the desolation, resulting in the Desolate Child of Loss doing something neither she nor Jake had ever seen it do before – it retreated to make distance.
Not just a small dodge-away before it would reengage, but it actually flew backward while throwing one of its bone spears. Carmen dodged the first one, but five more appeared right after, coming at her too fast for her to dodge as while she could handle the desolation, the environment remained affected, making them fly far faster than ordinary. Clicking her tongue, she took the hit and was blasted back, unharmed from the attack but with more distance between them again.
As a response, Carmen knelt down and placed two fists on the ground. “Sacred Battlefield.”
A pulse of golden light enveloped the entire area, creating an arena as she used a follow-up skill that combined with Sacred Battlefield. One of her newer additions that was perfect for a situation like this.
“Divine Bloodrune Seal.”
Connecting with the blood that made her a Runemaiden of Valdemar in the first place, a divine seal was placed upon the battlefield and all those within it. On her own forehead, a golden rune began glowing, and simultaneously, an identical golden rune marked the forehead of the Desolate Child of Loss. For a second, it even penetrated the desolation before the rune faded away, no longer visible but definitely still there.
From the looks of it, the False God didn’t even notice at first, but it definitely noticed the effects of the Divine Blood Seal as it continued trying to fly away. Its speed reduced significantly the closer it got to the edge of the battlefield and away from Carmen, and at the same time, when the Runemaiden shot forward in pursuit, her speed was far faster than before.
The Divine Bloodrune Seal had a few different effects, but in this context, it was done to ensure the Desolate Child of Loss was kept within the Sacred Battlefield. The rune worked not only on the False God, though, but also on Carmen herself.
Both of them would be slowed down if they tried to leave the Sacred Battlefield with the slowdown increasing progressively until they would be entirely unable to move right at the edge. At the same time, advancing toward an opponent within the Sacred Battlefield would allow either of them to experience a speed boost.
The entire purpose of this combo of skills was to force a confrontation, and it definitely did its job as the Desolate Child of Loss was soon caught up with again and forced into another melee scuffle it definitely didn’t enjoy. Once they were this close to each other, the Divine Bloodrune Seal didn’t have any effect, but if either party should try to run, it would reactivate.
With no escape, the Desolate Child of Loss tried to fight the best it could, but Carmen was once more superior as she dodged or blocked all attacks while pummeling the False God repeatedly, continuing to weaken it. After several dozen powerful blows, the Desolate Child of Loss was sent stumbling back, its body trying to regenerate from the continuous damage.
“Why!?” the creature screamed, with Carmen not even sure what it was asking about.
“Bad matchup, pal,” Carmen responded, just assuming the creature questioned why it was getting absolutely dominated.
In its defense... Carmen was perhaps the absolutely worst foe it could face in all of C-grade. She was a Runemaiden, after all, and one made using the blood of a Primordial, making her innate abilities as powerful as could be.
Runemaidens were elite pugilist fighters of Valhal. Their entire bodies were turned into living weapons, but in return, they had to give up some things. Carmen no longer had mana, and while she could painstakingly still transform stamina into mana should the need arise, doing so would also leave her weakened and temporarily disable some of her passive skills. This mana also couldn’t leave her body but could instead only, at most, be infused into items through physical touch.
Oh, but she couldn’t use weapons, either. Not even if she wanted to. Equipment was also severely limited for her, as, in many ways, her body was her equipment. That part didn’t bother her, though, as Carmen wouldn’t be able to find armor more durable than her own body, and it would definitely have worse self-repair functionality.
Still, all these limitations resulted in Carmen and other Runemaidens having few options when it came to combat outside of just charging at people and punching them. Which was a-okay with Carmen as that was how she preferred to fight. It was a big weakness, though... but Valhal had found ways to alleviate this. And all came down to their name:
Runemaidens.
The runes covering Carmen’s body weren’t just for show but served to increase her defenses against what she otherwise couldn’t defend against. While it was true her physical resilience was through the roof, these runes barely had any impact on that, as it was simply her skin being like steel. Instead, they were there nearly solely to counter all forms of magical effects on the Runemaiden.
Magic was the biggest weakness of most melee-focused warriors, and certain schools fucked them up more than others. Carmen, as someone who was purely physical, naturally had incredibly low Willpower, which made her weak against soul attacks and anything affecting her mind, but the runes entirely removed that weakness. There were exceptions, of course, such as Jake’s weird eye-skill still having some effect on Carmen, but even that was weakened.
To call her borderline immune to magic really was no understatement, though it naturally had its limits if it was forced to nullify too much and too potent magic at once. However, in most cases, the runes sealed the very concept of magic affecting the Runemaiden. Buffs from other people didn’t work on her, most of her boosting skills had no effect either, and as mentioned, she couldn’t use many auxiliary items, at least not without a lot of effort.
Her skill choices were also limited, and she had more passive than active skills by a large margin. What’s more, she was locked into her Path as the Runemaiden Ritual was a permanent change. Anything from now on would be a variant of it.
These things did seem bad, but overall, it was definitely fucking worth it in Carmen’s mind, and she had no regrets. To be the bane of all magic users in C-grade was bloody awesome, and against the Desolate Child of Loss that didn’t have anything besides its concept of desolation, she was like the False God’s natural predator.
The False God wasn’t truly that strong or fast. It only appeared like it was because it weakened everything and everyone that ever came close to it while breaking down the concepts in its environment, making it experience less resistance during any actions it took. Even the attacks that hit the Desolate Child of Loss were heavily nullified by desolation whenever they entered its body, and this was also the case for Carmen, though the golden pulses she released with every punch did do solid damage still.
She wouldn’t really classify them weakening as that big of a problem anyway. It just meant she would have to punch the Desolate Child of Loss for a lot longer before it weakened enough. Usually, giving an opponent time was problematic, but the False God simply wasn’t smart enough to even think up a way to escape or change the tide of battle.
Instead, it did dumb shit like trying to get rid of the Divine Bloodseal Rune by focusing its desolation on that rather than trying to target the far larger and more fragile Sacred Battlefield. Even now, the skill was passively weakening, and if the Desolate Child of Loss focused on getting rid of it, the False God would at least have a shot at escape. Alas, its stupidity only gave Carmen more time as the battle stretched on.
Her constant assault only picked up speed as more of her passive skills came into greater effect the more the battle dragged on, and she kept destroying the Desolate Child of Loss and depleting its energy, but it certainly wasn’t fast.
Also, while Carmen wasn’t afraid of a drawn-out battle, she did have a limit. The runes that lit up on her body offered a massive resistance, but it was only with active infusion she was able to entirely nullify the desolation. Should she run out of stamina and thus be unable to keep the runes going, things could get hairy, but honestly, as she broke the Desolate Child of Loss apart by breaking its spine and crushing its skull for the twelfth time, she got the feeling she would be the winner in this battle of endurance.
In fact, she was more worried about how Jake was keeping up with everything, as truthfully, from the brief glimpse she got of the Holy Church forces, he definitely had the tougher challenge to deal with.
That was only from her perspective, though, and Jake likely wouldn’t concur. Who knows, maybe he would even be done fast enough to come and see when it was time to put an end to the Desolate Child of Loss once and for all.