One last time, a gust of wind blew and interrupted the silence of the atmosphere that had been created. Even in Shima's childish nature, she understood now wasn't the time to joke around or gleefully use her innocent voice to try and entice Zeus to give up.
We all knew what had to be done.
Beginning our attack, Fuki enhanced his blade with some sort of skill that ignited it and ran at Zeus with a wide swing.
Coming down from above, Fuki slammed it into the ground, what looked like intentionally, and turned back to Zeus.
"[Ember]!" He shouted out.
The flames from the ground all shot up like they were controlled particles of dust, and then separately shot off at Zeus like they were tiny beams so flight. In fact... that sort of looked like my [Bullet] skill...
"[Ashes]!" Was the next skill Fuki shouted out.
After he did, the beams of small flames shot at Zeus's position as he dodged. Zeus was able to measly escape a few of the beams, but the two that caught onto his clothing singed it and left a mark on the positions they hit on his body.
"[Ignite]!" As the final skill in Fuki's arsenal, Zeus's clothing ignited into flames and clearly took some health off of him. He threw his shirt to the ground and stomped out the flames.
"A three-piece skill, all depending on how much I hit him with the Embers. I have plenty more where that came from. Anima, can you follow up on me?" Fuki asked me, brandishing a small dagger in his left hand.
I nodded and with Fuki's bravery... the brawl began.
Fuki jumped in and to my surprise, large rocks scattered around the battlefield started to rise with blue mana particles underneath him. Wasn't that... the Air Element?
I used [Dismanip], the skill I learned in cohesion with the Air Element, and turned the rocks out of Fuki's path.
Fuki must've had a lot of mana saved up because he was running at Zeus without pausing. Either that, or he was a master of deception as well.
Fuki landed a pretty intense slash on Zeus's chest. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was blocked by some sort of weapon underneath Zeus's last remaining shirt.
He pulled out a metal stick that extended in length, and I decided to use this opportunity to figure out what it was capable of.
"Fuki! Watch out!" I yelled out toward him.
Using my two staffs, I shot out two [Beam] skills right at the metallic weapon from his shirt.
The weapon turned out to be a fairly large shield as it extended outward and in a circular formation. Right now, with his long hair and long beard, he looked exactly how I imagined a portrayal of Zeus to be. With his shield and all except the Lightning Element, he looked fierce.
Using his shield, he was able to deflect the two attacks back at me. That's when Shima jumped in to absorb my own attacks I launched off. However, when I absorbed them, the mana wasn't added back to me.
I guess it made sense from a logical perspective, but I was hoping to be able to chain skills that returned to me so I had infinite mana or something... now's not the time Anima!
Fuki and I continued our path forward as Zeus threw his shield. Just like a certain character from my world, his shield bounced off of the raised cement blocks that once created his temple, and almost hit both Fuki and me.
It looked to be a homing weapon, one that wouldn't miss no matter how inaccurately Zeus threw it, so I needed to worry about it.
On its second round moving back to me, I used [Dismanip], but the skill reflected right off of the edge of the shield and shot toward me. I understood how the shield worked... but how could you block something like that?!
"What's wrong?! You guys are stopping there?!" Zeus asked us. From his back came another metallic stick, which ended up being another shield. Dammit!
He threw that one as well. Fuki was pathing all around Zeus, but couldn't quite land on him to attack. Zeus launched enough [Bullet] skills at Fuki to keep him away, while I was dealing with the shields.
In a battle of attrition... we lost. So, let's turn it into something different.
I let the two shields come at me one last time and ducked under them with lucky timing for a slide. Then, I used [Beam] on Zeus's back to see if the shields would block them...
Which they did.
That being said, I ran up as many rocks as possible, as close to Fuki as possible, and waited until the last possible second.
Then, I shot a [Beam] skill in the opposite direction from Zeus with [Yggdrasil's Bone].
Once I did, the shield instantly blocked it and gave me interesting information... the shield was designed to block my attacks.
I shot off another skill at Zeus, using [Titan's Wand], and this time, the shield teleported to his back and blocked that skill as well, deflecting it back toward me.
This would be stupid... but necessary!
I shot myself using [Beam] and put a hole straight through my hand, and eliminating around 50 HP. Then, I shot my Wand off again at the shield this time, and took the hit, taking around 75 HP.
My new plan was to use that to damage Zeus... but how could I accurately aim at him...?
"Fuki, I have a plan, but I need your help. Listen, I need to go back to back with Zeus, and I should be able to hit him with a pretty devastating attack. Can you do that for me?" I regrouped near Fuki and explained to him my plan quickly, and he eventually nodded.
"I can pull that off." He told me.