Amukelo and Eliss poured every ounce of their power into the fight, a relentless assault on Leviathan, who seemed to dance between dimensions, evading Eliss's spells with an almost preternatural grace while engaging with Amukelo directly. Despite their concerted efforts, Leviathan maintained a daunting advantage, its movements fluid and unpredictable, rendering Eliss's complex spellwork frustratingly ineffective.
As the beast dodged yet another of Eliss's meticulously crafted attacks, Amukelo caught her eye, signaling his need for just a moment of distraction. Understanding his intent, Eliss shifted her strategy, ramping up the intensity of her spells. She unleashed a barrage of elemental magic: torrents of water, gusts of wind, and searing firebolts filled the air, each orchestrated to corner and confine their formidable foe.
Yet Leviathan continued to evade with unsettling ease until Eliss introduced a change in her tactics. Abandoning the all-encompassing assault, she reverted to launching light beam spells from her actual position—a tactic she had momentarily set aside. Leviathan, now habituated to ignoring her physical location, was caught off-guard as the beam of light streaked towards it. Sensing the attack at the last moment, it dodged reflexively; however, Eliss had anticipated this. The beam, imbued with a homing enchantment, twisted in the air, relentlessly pursuing Leviathan.
Distracted by the persistent beam, Leviathan's attention wavered from Amukelo, providing the split second he needed. Seizing the opportunity, Eliss attempted a high-risk maneuver—a time lock spell. The spell intended to momentarily stop all Leviathan's movements but predictably, the formidable creature shattered the temporal bindings almost instantly, its power far surpassing Eliss's spell mastery. But the brief distraction had served its purpose.
In that critical moment, Amukelo executed a complex sword maneuver, his blades crossing and then parting in a sharp, calculated motion. This sent an x-cross space tear directed at Leviathan. As Leviathan moved to evade, Amukelo's true intent unfolded—the space where Leviathan dodged into was now a trap. Amukelo, with precise control and a deep understanding of spatial magic, manipulated the mana in the environment. The air around Leviathan shimmered, and sudden, sharp tears in the space around it snapped into existence. These spatial tears formed a rapidly closing net, designed to restrict movement and create a prison of jagged, mana-infused rifts.
As Leviathan found itself ensnared by the contracting network of space tears, it roared with primal fury. The dark energy that had always swirled ominously around its form now intensified, coalescing into a dense, shadowy armor. With a resounding bellow, it unleashed a powerful shockwave, a burst of dark mana that temporarily stalled the constricting spatial tears. In this brief reprieve, Leviathan charged towards what appeared to be a gap in the deadly lattice, where the concentration of tears was less dense.
Eliss, quick to act, attempted to thwart its escape. Her hands moved swiftly, conjuring barriers of earth and cascading prisons of water in a desperate effort to slow the beast. Offensive spells of fire and ice streaked through the air towards Leviathan, but each was rebuffed by the creature's shadow armor. Though her spells did little more than momentarily hinder its advance, they forced Leviathan to alter its path, pushing it perilously close to the remaining space tears.
With a calculated risk, Leviathan barreled through a narrow gap in the spatial trap. The decision came at a cost— as it cleared the barrier, the edges of the space tears sliced through its wing and sheared off parts of its horns. Pain and rage emanated from Leviathan in equal measure as it freed itself from the immediate threat of the trap.
Landing on the other side, Leviathan roared a vow of vengeance, "I will make you sufferrr!!" It then began to hurl dark mana bombs indiscriminately around the cavern, turning the area into a deadly war zone of explosive energy.
"Eliss, stay there!" Amukelo shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos as he sprinted to her side. Within moments, he was next to Eliss, moving with such speed that he seemed a blur. He immediately set to work, deploying space tears with precision, aiming to intercept and neutralize the incoming barrage of dark mana bombs.
Eliss, not one to stand idly by, began casting her most potent spells. Her magic surged forward, meeting some of the bombs head-on, disrupting their trajectories or lessening their impact. While her efforts did not stop many of the bombs, they slightly reduced the pressure on Amukelo, allowing him to focus on using his space tears more effectively.
However, the strain of continuously generating space tears began to show. Each tear he created sapped his strength, the effort visible in the grim set of his jaw and the slight tremor in his arms. This technique, though powerful, was new to him, and developed out of the necessity of the danger of the dungeon rather than through formal training. His control, while impressive, was still raw—fueled more by instinct and the dire circumstances they faced than by mastery.
As they fought back the relentless assault, Amukelo's movements started to slow, his reactions becoming less sharp as exhaustion crept in. Each spell cast, each tear created, was a testament to their determination, but also a step closer to the limits of their endurance. They were locked in a desperate battle not just with Leviathan, but with their own physical and magical limitations. The cavern echoed with the sounds of their struggle, a symphony of chaos and willpower as they fought to turn the tide against Leviathan's wrath.