Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] Chapter 230: Book 3: Chapter 80: Victories and Defeat (pt2)

Read chapter 230 of Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] by TTReynolds on NovelPedia.

Book 3: Chapter 80: Victories and Defeat (pt2) Cole launched himself forward and swung his hammer deep into the chimera beast’s side. It erupted with a wave of water aether that sent the queen's minion flopping over the ground, end over end. Zach and Ghrukk went in after it, tearing the chimera apart in a savage frenzy. Cole dropped his weapon and skidded to Lance’s side, his hands were already glowing with pale light as he stared a healing spell. His pulse thundered in his ears as he pressed down over his friend's stomach, fighting against the gush of blood. “Stay with me! Stay with me, damn it!” Lance coughed, crimson bubbling from his lips. His eyes fluttered, but Cole poured everything into his healing spell. Light and Water aether fused together, a mixture of intent and energy flooding the wound. The glow seared his vision and his body shook from the strain. The hole in Lance’s stomach slowly started to knit together. The effect was sluggish and imperfect, but it slowed the bleeding and helped with the worse of the organ damage. Enough to keep him breathing. Cole sagged, gasping. He nearly blacked out, but forced himself to keep going until the bleeding had stopped completely and Lance’s breathing steadied. Only then did he collapse beside him, drenched in sweat, his heart still hammering. They were alive. The Light Queen was dead. *** The Magam-queen’s many slashes, claws, bites, tail-whips and wing buffets were like that of a wild animal being cornered. Every motion was feral, and she came at them as if the battlefield itself was her body, her molten rage made flesh. Aburi’s blue-black aura rippled off his frame, water and shadow folding together, as if the ocean was a creature and the tides its muscle. His greatsword spun and carved lines in the air, each motion unbreakable as a dam against a flood. Every strike he intercepted shuddered through the ground around them. Tom-Tom had abandoned his usual barrage of conjured ladles. Instead, he focused on his spell casting. He expended his aether, the earth cracking and erupting at his gestures. Razor sharp stone lances shot up beneath the Queen’s limbs, hemming her movements and forcing her to either tear her flesh on their edges or stumble into angles that left her open. Holly and Selka attacked through those openings. Wind wrapped Holly’s body, her sword cleaving forward with the speed of a spinning engine propeller. Selka’s blade danced with lightning, in tandem with her. They struck and withdrew, then struck again, carving bleeding wounds across the Queen’s armored body one slash at a time. The Queen realized what was happening of course, she was losing through a battle of attrition. Death, literally by a thousand cuts. Heat spiked around her like the opening of a forge door. Fire-aether poured off her in sheets, becoming a blast furnace that washed over the team and staggered them back. Her frame glowed until the shell of her exoskeleton blistered then cracked, and sloughed off in slabs. Beneath it, her body was sleeker, with toned muscle and burning with an orange brilliance. She blurred forward faster than before. Her claw aimed straight for Aburi’s throat. Aburi slammed his greatsword down, point-first into the earth. Water erupted in a geyser, bursting from dry soil as if he’d cracked open an ocean vein. A cyclone swirled around him, walls of liquid spiraling up his frame. Droplets lifted into the air, then shot out like bullets, hammering the Queen in front of him. Still she advanced, shrieking as the water battered against her form and slowed her down. Tom-Tom tried to throw walls of stone in her path, but her claws tore through them, even melting the stone at the points of contact. Spikes jutted, barricades rose, but she smashed them apart, step by step breaking into Aburi’s storm. That was when Holly and Selka closed their eyes and joined their power to his. Wind gathered into storm clouds above them, and lightning began threading their black underbellies. The