D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Kat —

The battle became much less frantic after that, settling into something of a stalemate. Lily spent her time up in the air recovering mana and watching in case she needed to intervene… but so far everything was ‘fine’. For a given definition of the word.

Combat largely consisted of the dragon attacking, Kat dodging by turning into water and hiding below the strike, then using the opening provided to hit back to essentially no effect. Sure there were some ideas tested on both sides, but they had no major effect on the outcome of the battle.

On Kat’s side of things, she tried to slice the dragon a few times to see if it was possible to do more damage that way… sadly it did nothing to the scales on the dragon.

Punching it was Kat’s best bet. It did… some damage at least. Kat managed to slightly crack a scale that she struck dead in the centre with a as much power as she could manage without the ground to support her attacks. So much energy wasted on sending her back to the ground. Though even then it might not have mattered.

Sure Kat could consistently crack the scales… but it was more like the singular scale. Every time Kat struck she aimed for the same spot and it was always healed by the time she struck out again. The dragon didn’t even seem to mind it especially much. It was more like a heavy shove. Oh sure it was still angry and murderous but it was clearly just as prepared to keep at this slog fest as Kat was.

It seemed like she wasn’t considered enough of a threat for it to branch out much.

Which isn’t to say it didn’t try a few things. The first was trying to swipe at her. The same moment it raised its head, it had readied a claw to slash Kat apart as she attacked. Perhaps if turning into water prevented her from seeing at all it would’ve worked, though even then maybe not. As it was? Kat could see it winding up before the dragon tried to attack her with it, so dodging wasn’t too bad.

It made her follow-up strike more of a pain to manage, but the drake seemed content on the ground for a while.

This continued on for some time, Kat dodging and punching, the drake trying to crush her and occasionally bringing out a claw. It seems like leaving it trapped in a bubble for multiple days had taught it at least some patience. The first time this changed was when it attempted to fly. Kat had a guess as to why the dragon attacked right now… but she couldn’t be certain of why.

Perhaps it was for the best in the end, because Lily came in and sent the dragon crashing back into the ground for its attempt.

The moment the dragon left the ground Lily launched another one of her giant paper spears the dragon, specifically at its tail. As soon as the spear made contact the dragon fell right back downwards, into Kat’s waiting fist. Kat managed to actually get a bit of blood to leak out of the dragon with that strike! Still not as much damage as Lily’s eye lance, but it was something.

*Hey Lily, how did you figure out that the dragon needed its tail to fly?* Asked Kat as she crouched down in the hole she’d made and attempted to recover a bit of energy. That was another more recent development. Despite Kat taking essentially no damage, keeping her mind in overdrive, empowering her muscles, and swapping forms all the time? Well that still ate up demonic energy.

So Kat dug a proper hole, not just one for her water form, and was attempting to use it to rest between strikes. It was probably what had caused the dragon to try taking off in the first place. It had been a good few seconds since Kat had last punched it.

[Ah… call it an educated guess.] Kat winced as the dragon kept thrashing around up there. It was a risk to not bother with her transformation right now… but it seemed fine. It wasn’t going to kill her, and Kat really needed the energy.

*Well mind elaborating? Also why is it freaking out so much? I can’t exactly see now I’m back in my little hole.*

[Well the easy part of that… is my spear managed to go right through its tail, and it’s still there. Sort of. So it swiped at it trying to… get it out I guess?

But it wasn’t strong enough to stand up to the claws so it just cut off the upper part of the spear… which did nothing to remove the part already in the dragon and while it’s getting hard to see because of the dust its just generally failing to get it out.]

[As for why? Well… most magical things that can fly, naturally that is, tend to have something that helps them with that. Sure there are spells and stuff, but for most monsters? If they fly it’s because they have a body part helping them. Just because your wings clearly use some magic bullshit to work doesn’t mean you can fly without them. No idea why honestly, but that’s how it is.]

[Now, obviously the drake doesn’t have any obvious flight granting limbs like wings, so I just sort of had to guess. I had to choose between the whiskers, which I doubted I could hit, the crystal, which probably isn’t on other more normal eastern dragons, and the feathery tail. So really I had one option.]

It really seems to have worked. Do you think you can keep doing that?

[Ah… no. Not at all. That was pretty much all of my mana actually.]

Um… maybe head off somewhere to meditate?

[Where? This place is a small self-contained bubble. I reckon I’m better staying up here in the air and regenerating what I can. I mean, I was taking it easy before and each spear takes about half of my mana pool… so I have SOME mana but not enough for any spell I can think of that matters. Um… you’re not angry that I wasted that right?]

Huh? A waste? You managed to ground the drake, give us both time to recover, and possibly deal more damage in a single cast then I’ve done in the past… however long this fight has been. The first one was great too! Got it right in the eye.

[Pure luck for the eye. But um… yeah thanks. Just know I won’t be able to do that again. Though… it also might not matter.]

Oh? Why is that?

[Well the drake has curled up a bit and is trying to bit at its tail now to get the spear out. I suspect that it’s going to eventually get angry and bite right through its tail. Sadly, it’ll probably grow back, and even more sadly I bet it’ll know to just do that the second time. Not that I can promise to hit it either. I’m still not sure how I managed such good hits both times.]

Don’t go doubting yourself Lily. As I already pointed out, the you’ve done a lot more damage to it then I have. Though… where the heck is everyone else?! I mean, I get that this is tense combat and it probably hasn’t been ten minutes yet but seriously what’s going on?

[I don’t know. Also, get ready the drake just bit through its own tail. It’s thrashing about some more, but I bet it’ll get over the pain soon, and it might turn its gaze towards me so be ready for that. As for everyone else? I think I was able to guide you through the ‘fastest’ path through the broken space. Which sounded great at the time, but I realise now means we’re here and they aren’t.

So it was probably a mistake.]

Kat could hear that Lily was right. The drake wasn’t stomping around quite so much anymore. She debated transforming into water to not get caught off guard… but those pressure for extra moments of demonic energy recharge were too tempting right now.

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Instead she peaked out and saw that the dragon was looking around for the source of its pain… but all the dust it had kicked up really wasn’t helping matters.

Kat grinned at this. Sure it’d probably only by them a few seconds of extra time before the dragon managed to find one of them… but that was fine. It was just nice to enjoy the fact that it had screwed up big time. Kat imagined herself in a cheerleading outfit spelling out Lily’s name and sent it her way. Lily really was the MVP this time. And very embarrassed, which was just as amusing at the moment.

Sure the dragon was trying very hard to kill them… but for now? Kat would make the most of her chance to rest. She might even climb back up to 40% energy if the dragon kept wasting time like this.