"Now, afraid to fight the final boss? Let her demonstrate a bit of her powers..." and then Maina raised her arm till her shoulder.
"She's using fire conjuration! Matrix!"
As usual, their technician Reinard had figured out the element their opponent was going to use.
"On it!
Josh was at a loss of what to do. He already knew that the Allocyst members were doomed. So, his eyes darted upwards. Having made up his mind, Josh used
"Going towards Gruffold to stop him from destroying this city? You are too cowardly..."
"Why should the innocents die when they have no need to? We instructed to complete this assignment in a clean manner."
"What? You won't let me destroy even a single city? Destroying just a single metropolitan city is clean enough, I am not destroying a whole country or something."
Josh exhaled in resignation. He was talking to a brick wall with a completely different mindset and set of morals. Leaving her to her own devices, he started going towards the person who had a was hell bent on venting his anger on the entire city.
"Tsk. Spineless bastard." Along with a clicking of the tongue, these words left the mouth of the face contorted in derision as Maina looked at Josh who was going away.
But that instantly changed into a smug smirk.
"Here, see the full extent of my skill.
Hearing the name of the spell, none of them could stop themselves from holding their breaths. Everyone knew it was combination of two peak spells of the fire and earth element,
Fire infused with Astra was significantly harder to extinguish while it spread slower, while Astra infused Earth disintegrated to form superfine dust. That superfine dust if inhaled, destabilized the flow of energy inside the body.
Matrix used his expert intuition to shift the barriers to their feet without any instruction at all. And it paid off.
The earth started rumbling violently as if it was the epicentre of scale eight earthquake. Yaleena and others tried to maintain balance by reinforcing their feet with Mana. The already cracked road couldn't take any more torture and started caving in. As soon as the cracks deepened, golden tendrils of fire came out.
*BWWAAAAAAMMMM!!!*
A devastating implosion occurred as the golden fire, undeterred by the torrential rainfall, spread out, as if mocking the dark clouds. As the rain pelted ground mercilessly, it gave in, while a huge wave of flames rose, threatening to swallow the entire city.
The Allocyst members were thrown as if they were roadside pebbles.
====================================
Josh painfully looked at the scene unfolding in front of his eyes. He was standing in the air on a platform produced by
Half of the city was encased in golden flames, vaporising the rain even before it could reach the ground. The buildings destroyed due to
As for why Yaleena and others couldn't defend against that attack, he was the culprit. He had snuck in a debuff in the moment Malay just as she started chanting the spell, using stealth to hide it from Reinard till the last moment. Using had stealth-imbued debuff drained nearly all of his stamina and mana.
His telepathic command was, ["They are weakened. Please finish them off with weak spells"] Josh instructed this because he the consequences of using devastating spells in densely populated areas.
Surprisingly, he had also received an affirmation from Malay, but now Josh realised his stupidity. The false hope in his mind shattered into pieces.
"I... am so foolish. I thought myself to be a hero who could kill them without collateral damage. Why the fuck was I grouped up with these crazy shits... I bided time for all these years... only to see this?"
He couldn't even see properly, his eyes were overflowing. When he spoke, that croaky choking voice surprised even himself. The memories of his struggles flowed to his mind as his body vibrated along with every aftershock and explosion of the combo spell.
He had scoured every place normal people deemed to be important and popular, hoping he might find Allocyst members. Rigorously searched over half of the planet while asking the other two to search only small areas.
Crafted plans to outsmart Allocyst. Once they were a few inches close to success without causing collateral damage, but that impatient Gruffold managed to get himself ambushed.
Allocyst escaped with a single casualty. And now... this. All his hard work in vain. His so called 'teammates' weren't interested in the least to listen to him. One was blind, the other was twisted. Josh realised his condition. He had failed. Tears streaming endlessly, their warmth sucked away rapidly by the chilling rain, Josh was served with cold regret on his plate.
He looked at the destroyed portions of the city, the southern, eastern and, all reduced fist to rubble, then to ash. In some places, the vivid golden fire could be still seen dancing. The central sector was nowhere to be seen. It's road and building foundations were wiped out, exposing the sewer beneath. Even the sewer floor was broken.
But he witnessed a strange thing. He could spot Mino, who was in the western part of the city. He was stopped by a mysterious woman.
His eyes widened, it was the same woman who claimed herself to be a 'wanderer' years ago! Now she was trying to harm helpless people! Even though Josh was filled with regret, it would be the greatest regret of all to allow that woman to harm his only friend, Mino. He gathered his last bit of Mana and whispered, "
As if freed from a huge load, he sighed out a single sentence.
"Fine. If everyone wants it, then so be it. I give up."
Slowly declaring those words, he unclenched his fists, and allowed the rain to wash the blood off his nails and his palm.
Out of Mana, the platform due to
[I guess that's the end of me. But I really wanted to confirm one thing. We were taught that the Allocyst was a group organized to break the system and kill the planet... but is it really true? Isn't it possible that we were misled and tricked... because I didn't even feel the presence of a system in this planet... Hell, It's already too late to find out though...]
Smiling wryly, Josh closed his eyes. He didn't know whether he would be of any help or not, but he didn't care.
With a gut wrenching sound, Josh's body fell down on a long pair of spikes, one piercing his lungs and another his throat. He wasn't even granted a swift and easy death, he choked painfully on his own blood. After about half a minute, his body ceased moving. Josh, the only sensible one out of the three, was dead, just like that.