Chapter 26: Chapter 102 – Extreme Mid-Air Chopping

Fortunately, before the fierce emerald storm ate away two-thirds of Selene’s barrier, the flames died out. The first thing they noticed was an unimaginable amount of melted bones, some still burning with green fire here and there. The second thing explained why the attack had stopped.

Umbra, still in control of the Voidtaur, hung down from the Skeletal Dragon’s lower jaw with one hand while bashing the side of its chin with the greatsword in the other. No one understood how he had even gotten himself there, but the fact that he was effectively redirecting the Dragon’s breath anywhere but into them was a life-saver.

Noticing the annoying entity continuously pushing its head to the side, the Dragon stopped the violent flames and switched to attempting to swat Umbra away.

Already expecting it, he lodged the weapon between the teeth of his much bigger opponent and used it to launch himself higher, causing the Dragon to strongly slap itself for no reason.

Landing on top of its skull, Umbra reignited his blade and ran over the Dragon’s spine. He reached the wings and started repeatedly chopping the thick bones like a lumberjack cutting down an old tree. It would look quite comical if not for the whole situation everyone was in.

The Skeletal Dragon of course was not happy with someone slowly chipping off the base of its wings and began flying around the whole cave while doing impressive aerial acrobatics. Standing on the ground, the rest of the party watched it make loops, barrels, spins, hammerheads, and some erratic movements that resembled pretty much nothing.

But, amongst all of that, they could hear Umbra’s rough and roaring laughter coming from the Voidtaur’s throat as he kept repeatedly driving his flaming blade into the persistent white bone tree, releasing regular thumps into the air. He chose to damage the Voidtaur’s body a bit and sent out his shadows from inside it, wrapping them around the bones and spikes on top of the Dragon, firmly locking himself in place.

“That’s not something I’d have ever thought I’d see in my entire lifetime…” Suanori said with a wry smile.

“Quite a limiting mindset for an S-ranked adventurer, Guildmaster.” Asterios chuckled and then glanced around. “While dangerous, this breath had dealt with all the Skeletons for us. We can hit the Dragon together with everything we have. After it falls to the ground.”

“It will take some time if we leave it just to Umbra, my Lord. He’s not even halfway through the bone,” Selene commented.

“I know. But now, the two of you can help him without worrying about us.”

Asterios snapped his fingers and the formations he had placed on Miria’s and Selene’s back during the preparation they had done earlier activated. Both of the girls lit up in flames, respectively crimson and blue, just like when they had fought the Monarch of Blood.

“Go and take care of the other wing. You already know what I’m thinking of. I’ll stop its thrashing for a brief moment.”

Selene closed her eyes and began shaping a very sharp woodcutting axe with her spiritual energy. After finishing forming the tool rather than a weapon, she surrounded it with the blue fire that emanated an aura of frost.

Miria sheathed one of her shortswords and focused solely on a single one, extending its length and width with her Mana Coating into something akin to a single-edged greatsword. She began filling it with mana and it exploded in crimson flames after heating up to an almost blindingly white level.

They both nodded at Asterios and started running through the air with the help of Selene’s ethereal platforms. He, in turn, removed the current token from his Spellslinger and brought out a Runic Chip of mesmerizing golden color, pushing it into the niche.

He turned to Suanori. “I need something to cushion the blowback. Can you take care of it?”

Albeit slightly confused, she nodded and began chanting a spell in Elvish as a green aura surrounded her staff.

“It better be both soft and durable.” Asterios chuckled and focused on his own preparations.

He began drawing out more of the scorching hot mana and filling his whole circuits with it to the brim. He would need a huge amount of spiritual energy to fuel the spell, which might be currently the most powerful in his arsenal. Additionally, he had a feeling that he could boost it much more if he charged fully not just the crystal but also the formations in his Spellslinger. If Cynthia really had created one with the same quality as in the legends, they were in for a show.

Suanori finished her spell and readied it for activation just the moment Asterios filled his circuits to the brim. She saw him surrounded by a leaking crimson aura that formed a barely visible mist. The pressure the young human exuded was unbelievable.

While she was admiring the captivating atmosphere, Asterios extended both of his arms to the front and then angled them slightly up, with his black blade sheathed; it looked like he was holding onto some invisible polearm horizontally.

Suanori squinted her eyes when she noticed a faint trace of yellow motes of light forming inside his palms. Something suddenly flashed and forced her to quickly cover her face with her arm for a brief moment. 

When the glow faded, she noticed that there was now a very wide and elaborate arc of solid golden light coming out of Ast’s hands, on both sides, forming a bow of an impressive size. It seemed to be bigger than him if he held it vertically.

Asterios moved his right hand a little lower, closer to himself, and closed his fingers into a fist. A thin white string materialized and completed the bow. He drew his right leg to the back to stabilize his posture and began pulling on the bowstring.

The moment the white line tensed just a little, intense pressure shot out from the point of Ast’s hand, hitting Suanori like a powerful storm and causing both her and his clothes to start wildly fluttering. The more he drew the bowstring back, bit by bit, the stronger the spiritual wind became, almost pushing her away.

Above his right arm, something started forming out of the golden light while the bow tensed more and more. The sheer size of what Suanori first assumed would be an arrow, quickly made her change her mind. It was no arrow. The holy projectile resembled a hefty harpoon or a ballista bolt, increasing in size with each centimeter Asterios managed to pull the bowstring back, clearly struggling against the resistant line as his whole body kept shaking.

Finally, after a good fifteen seconds since he started, Asterios reached as far as he could and brought the white line to his very chest while surrounded by a spiritual storm that was going berserk. The whole golden-white contraption he had created looked divine, impressive, mighty, and powerful. Something that a mere human of his stature shouldn’t be able to wield.

“Ready?!” Asterios shouted and Suanori was brought back from the depths of her mind, focusing on the spell again.

A second passed. Then two. Then three. Then ten. Then twenty. Nothing was happening. Asterios waited, trembling, struggling. She started wondering if perhaps he was unable to launch the huge javelin that had formed while he was drawing the bow. But then. It happened, surprising her even more.

Asterios roared loudly and pushed his left foot up and against the bow’s grip near his hand. In one strong motion, he kicked forward, fully extending his leg, and pulled on the bowstring even further back with both hands, taking a position that made his body look like an actual ballista, aimed at the sky. 

The holy spear gained in size again, flashed, and got launched into the air with a powerful explosion that sent Asterios flying to the back at a breakneck speed the moment he let go.

While he tore through five walls of comfy greenery and vines that Suanori had erected, stopping only at the sixth one, the impressive golden projectile soared through the air with a loud hum and bright glow until it met with the passing Dragon and nailed its ribcage to the cavern’s ceiling, lodging itself between its bones.

Miria and Selene were waiting exactly for this to happen and appeared by its right wing while Umbra barely managed not to get squished into the stone surface by letting his body slightly slide to the side from being on the very top of the Dragon’s spine.

He resumed the chopping with even more vigor and force as the girls began their own work. With a spiritual platform set perfectly to grant them unobstructed access to the base of the wing, they stood side by side.

Miria was the first to move and slashed at the bone with her blazing hot flaming greatsword with a loud shout. It did not penetrate the structure, creating only a minuscule dent in it, but both the flames that exploded on impact and the white-hot blade caused its temperature to spike substantially. She withdrew her sword after the attacked point glowed orange.

Selene took her place after Miria jumped to the side and she drove her axe surrounded by freezing flames into the heated section before it could cool down by itself. A loud hissing was released into the air, accompanied by plenty of steam. Her cold fire lowered its temperature to the point of white frost starting to run over the bone and she made space for Miria to strike again.

They entered a cycle of violent tempering which when correctly used with some metal alloys and other materials caused them to toughen, instead made the Dragon’s bone more brittle with each too intense cycle. It didn’t take long before cracks began appearing on the whitish surface and small chunks began falling off with each rotation.

The Skeletal Dragon struggled to free itself from the impressive shining javelin with how it pinned it to the ceiling, but bit by bit, the monster was sliding down its length. Finally, with enough thrashing and wriggling, the Dragon freed itself completely.

But, the moment it flapped its massive wings, two loud cracking sounds traveled through the stone cavern and it came crashing down while roaring and spinning around its own axis until it slammed into the ground with a loud thud. 

High above it, on a spiritual platform, stood the trio of bone cutters. Miria and Umbra held a skeletal wing each like their own trophies and Selene just posed between them with her arms crossed over her chest and a proud smirk on her face.

You are reading story Rise of the Weakest Summoner at novel35.com

“Unbelievable…” Suanori commented with an amazed expression.

“You get used to it after a while.” Asterios chuckled, getting himself out of the web of green wines that had tightly wrapped themselves all around his body, forcing him to tear them off one by one. “Save the astonishment for later. We still have to kill it.”

“I know. I could try to force its jaws open, but I have a feeling that it would just fill its belly with that green fire again and burn all my vines, wood, earth, or stone away shortly after. Do you have any other strong spells stored?”

“I’m afraid none that could be of much help with how tough it is. Even that Divine Warspear I had launched earlier wouldn’t pierce the bones alone. It’s all in the hands of the girls and Umbra. I think its bones are even sturdier than when it was alive if my knowledge is correct.”

As he said that, three figures slammed into the Dragon, which had been raising itself from the small crater its body created after falling from the air. The trio of familiars started working together to defeat their enemy.

While Selene and Umbra held its front legs down for a moment, Miria attempted to sneak into its body from between its ribs, but the moment she passed through them and turned towards its neck, emerald swirling flames began forming in its stomach again and she had to quickly escape before they rushed forward, forcing everyone to jump back from the fiery assault.

“Looks like you were right,” Asterios said to Suanori.

“I would have loved not to be,” she responded with a sigh.

“Come on. Let’s help them out. We can do this.”

She nodded and they ran towards the ongoing battle together. While Asterios had said that they should help the trio out, he had been supporting them all the time since the very beginning, activating various smaller techniques that aided either Miria or Selene, like Sensory Boost, Haste, Blur, with the short exception of when he fully focused on casting the Divine Warspear. He obviously knew everything that transpired amongst the three of his familiars too. Besides the sudden shift in Umbra's position during the green inferno, somehow.

They didn’t arrive right in front of the Dragon, which was entangled in a battle with the trio, and stopped somewhere on the side. If it decided to breathe fire again, they would have a hard time avoiding it and would most likely need to rely on Selene again, who was relentlessly bombarding her enemy with incredible punches and kicks, pushing its body parts into all sides while using her Ethereal Shift to move around it.

Their current strategy consisted mostly of the attempts to bring the Dragon’s head to the ground and try to pry its jaws open before it had time to spew more flames, obstructing their path to the crystal embedded into the inner side of its skull. The monster’s incredible toughness and annoying fire made it quite challenging. Fortunately, it didn’t know that many other tricks.

Additionally, Umbra’s toy was starting to really wear down. The Voidtaur had been bleeding from the holes in its abdomen for quite a while already and its strength was seeping away with the purple liquid. Just a few more minutes and it would be completely useless. Therefore, Umbra decided to utilize it to the fullest, sharing with his master and companions his quickly assembled plan.

“Can you pin it to the ground the moment they bring it down?” Asterios asked Suanori.

“I’ll try my best.” She recalled a few of the gems that were circling the head of her staff and began chanting.

Selene’s posture blurred and she disappeared again in a blue flash, dodging an attempted chomp at her. She showed up in the air above the Dragon and the visible spiritual aura shot out of her body much more after she clasped her hands together; all five of her tails began shaking behind her back.

At first, four small orbs of swirling condensed mana appeared behind her back in a horizontal line, but they quickly started growing more and more. Soon, they were bigger than her. A moment later, they were already twice Selene’s size. 

While she continuously poured mana into the giant violent balls, Miria took it on herself to capture the attention of the Dragon. The flaming arcs her extended shortsword kept shooting at its skull didn’t have that much of an effect on it, but they clearly annoyed the overgrown undead lizard. She swiftly dodged all of its swipes without even using Haste, thanks to her boosted performance through drawing from her bloodline.

When Selene finished her preparations, each of the four orbs of spiraling mana was almost as wide as the Dragon's ribcage at its widest point. She threw her arms down and the spiritual spheres fell from the air onto the monster, pushing it into the ground by spreading all along its spine and nailing it to the stone floor hard enough for it to crack and cave in. The giant spinning orbs kept pressuring it continuously, grinding its bones just a little at the same time.

Suanori didn’t waste any second and activated her prepared technique. Five gigantic arms of obsidian-black stone surged from the sides of the Dragon and curled around its four limbs and neck, diving back into the floor to grab onto it.

At the same time, Miria and Umbra appeared by each side of its skull, and using all of their strength, they heaved open the Dragon’s mouth, leaving its lower jaw resting on the ground. Asterios quickly arrived in front of it, jumped inside, and activated the Runic Chip stored in his Spellslinger. 

A cage of lightning formed between the monster’s top and bottom teeth, entrapping nothing inside. But, it allowed Miria and Umbra to let go of the Dragon’s jaws and quickly join him as the cage stopped the jaws from closing for a brief moment before it relented under the heavy pressure.

The moment the duo arrived by Ast’s side, Umbra immediately set his giant greatsword in the place of the cage before the Dragon closed its maw. The Dragon’s jaws dropped onto the weapon and stopped again, digging the blade deeper between its sharp teeth like a giant toothpick that had somehow ended up in a vertical position

All three of them started noticing a green hue from further ahead and knew perfectly what was coming. While Asterios kneeled down and slotted another token into his weapon, Umbra took a few steps towards the Dragon’s spine and took a huge, deep breath.

The moment the fierce swirling firestorm reached their position, he released his own flames from the Voidtaur’s mouth. A thin purple stream crashed into the violent emerald river, splitting it in the middle and redirecting the green inferno to the sides around him and the other two behind his back. 

Everyone knew that this state of things wouldn’t last long and Asterios finished filling the crystal with his fiery mana. Miria was sweating profusely from the insane heat that surrounded them from the green flames. She jumped up into the air and landed on Ast’s joined hands, pushing him into a crouch with the weight of her body.

He roared loudly while the Overdrive spell activated, filling his muscles with power. The stored technique was a less-frowned-upon cousin of the Limit Breaker crystal he had used in the past, which wouldn’t completely devastate his insides with a single short use.

Nevertheless, he heaved upwards at the same time as Miria pushed off of his hands, launching her vertically, spinning about her own axis. Over her head, she held a single shortsword clad in the sharpest Mana Coating she'd ever created.

She crashed into the emerald crystal in the upper jaw of the Dragon and began relentlessly drilling into it, putting her all into the strike that would decide their lives. The gem seemed to be even tougher than the reinforced bones of the Skeletal Dragon and released violent sparks of malachite color as she kept continuously scratching its surface.

Intent on making it break before Umbra’s fire breath ran out, she continued to burn through Ast’s fiery energy coming through their connection. The crimson flames that had replaced her fur intensified with each passing second, soon beating the green hue from the Dragon’s and illuminating the inside of its skull in a scarlet shade.

The Voidtaur’s front was starting to literally melt from the intensity of the heat that the Dragon’s breath emanated, slowly reducing the length of its own flames and bringing the point where it split the ferocious stream into two closer to its head. Soon, they would swallow it whole and engulf the others too.

But, just moments before the disaster struck, everyone heard a loud ceramic crack, and Miria’s blade finally pierced into the gem, shattering it into tiny pieces. Her sword bore into the bone behind it and quite quickly drilled through it, stopping the spinning with the blade embedded halfway into the white matter. She hung from it with one hand and quickly glanced down.

The Voidtaur’s body had gotten burned by the green flames but they had died out before reaching Asterios, who was being sheltered by Umbra’s shadow after he had escaped before getting encased in fire.

They didn’t see any more movement from the Dragon. It was finally dead. This time for good.

Miria sighed in relief, relaxing a little bit too much and causing her grip to slip off the handle of her blade. She tried to quickly grab it again but failed and came falling down straight into Ast’s arms, waiting for her at the bottom. She giggled at him with an awkward smile amongst the rough breaths she was releasing from all the exhaustion.

He smiled back at her, and brought her outside of the Dragon’s skull while Umbra followed. Selene dismissed the swirling orbs of death and also began descending from the air. Suanori canceled her spell too and the obsidian arms crumbled into dust. They all turned towards the Core, still surrounded by four plates of thick bone.

It was not the end yet.

 

You can find story with these keywords: Rise of the Weakest Summoner, Read Rise of the Weakest Summoner, Rise of the Weakest Summoner novel, Rise of the Weakest Summoner book, Rise of the Weakest Summoner story, Rise of the Weakest Summoner full, Rise of the Weakest Summoner Latest Chapter