The impact against the sealed doorway left King’s vision swimming, but his quick reflexes kicked in. He rolled to his feet, checking his HUD. The fall had chipped away a fraction of his HP, but his MP pool was still high, and the +3 MP regeneration from his newly equipped Magic Staff was already ticking. He grabbed the staff from his back.

Across the shattered sanctum, Grand Magus Ephelia was already moving. The air around her shimmered with a deadly, multicolored aura.

"Barlan, aggro her! Don’t let her cast!" King shouted, raising his staff. The weapon’s focus crystal flared with a pale, translucent light as he channeled his construct creation spell.

Barlan roared, stretching his arms wide. With a low screech, a surge of dark, decaying energy flooded his footing. The Arcbearer reached into the void of the box and pulled out the Hammer of Ruin. The weapon was colossal, its head forged from jagged, blackened stone that seemed to actively rot the air around it.

Barlan swung the hammer in a wide arc, slamming it into the floor.

A jagged shockwave of destructive energy tore through the masonry, racing straight toward the Grand Magus.

Ephelia’s eyes flashed green. "Insolent pests!"

With a swift upward motion of her hands, she raised a massive wall of earth from the sanctum floor to block the shockwave. But the Hammer of Ruin lived up to its name. The moment Barlan’s wave of destruction collided with the stone barrier, the earth didn’t just break, it decayed into fine, lifeless ash.

Before Ephelia could register the speed of the destruction, Barlan closed the distance, leaping into the air and bringing the hammer down toward her crown.

The Grand Magus reacted with seasoned speed. She pointed a ringed finger downward, her eyes glowed red, and an explosive burst of fire erupted beneath her feet, propelling her backward in a tactical retreat. Barlan’s hammer struck the empty floor where she had just stood.

CRACK.

The sheer force of the strike didn’t just shatter the stone; it deleted a chunk of the arena’s floor, leaving a gaping, glitching void of pure ruin.

King didn’t let the opening go to waste. Utilizing the stat boost from his staff, he rapidly manifested three oversized construct botls, their tips spinning like drills. He hurled them in a tight spread, aiming to pin Ephelia down once she landed from her fire-propelled leap.

Ephelia, mid-air, twisted her torso with impossible grace for an eight-foot-tall figure. She waved her right arm, summoning a localized vortex of freezing wind. The ice-cold gale caught the first two construct spears, coating them instantly in heavy frost and shattering them into harmless bits.

The third spear, however, cut through the wind. It grazed her shoulder, pulling a sharp hiss of pain from the boss and chipping another small fraction off her health bar.

"Enough!" Ephelia snarled as her feet touched the ground.

She grounded her stance, and the true threat of a multi-elemental Grand Magus revealed itself. She began a rapid-cast sequence. Her left hand crackled with cascading arcs of lightning, an advanced variant of her air alignment, while her right hand ignited with a roaring, concentrated fireball. She threw both hands forward, unleashing a devastating dual-elemental AOE (Attack On Everything), which spread to consume both of them.

King knew this much fire power was way above his construction defenses. He moved quickly, repositioning behind Barlan who already acted on the defensive.

In his left hand, the Shield of Ruin manifested, intercepting the attack with terrifying speed. Despite the massive box on his back, Barlan the Archbearer showed unparallel reflexes and agility. The dark, entropic aura radiating from the artifact flared to life.

When the roaring fireball and the crackling lightning struck the shield, there was no explosive clash. Instead, the destructive magic simply dissolved. Giving off a sharp sizzle as the Shield of Ruin actively unmade the elements, breaking the spells down into raw, neutralized mana before they could touch them.

However, King noticed Barlan’s posture stiffen. Destroying the high-tier elemental magic was draining the Arcbearer’s stamina. They couldn’t play defense forever.

"My turn," King muttered.

He planted his staff firmly into the ground. Utilizing its augmented mind stat to its absolute limit. The crystal flared blindingly bright, and instead of spawning simple projectiles, the floor around Ephelia rapidly transuted. Four massive, interlocking construct pillars of solid energy erupted from the masonry, snapping together like an iron maiden to cage the eight-foot-tall Magus.

Ephelia’s eyes went wide, but her reaction time was instant. She shifted her affinity.

"Wash away, filth!" she shrieked.

A massive torrent of high-pressure water erupted directly from her palms, forming a roaring, spherical shield. The sheer force of the expanding water pressure slammed into King’s closing energy pillars, cracking the constructs before they could fully lock shut. With a violent thrust of her arms, she collapsed her defensive barrier and redirected the massive volume of water forward, transforming it into a towering tidal wave that surged across the entire width of the sanctum.

King reacted with the experience of a pro gamer who’d seen the technique one too many times. He knew he couldn’t tank a wave of that volume, so he opted for a different escape.

Sweeping his staff upward, he triggered his construct spell instantly beneath his feet. A swift, pillar-like platform of energy with a knife edge, shot out from the floor, elevating his footing and hoisting him safely above the roaring crest of the oncoming deluge. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Barlan, however, didn’t move an inch.

The Arcbearer planted both boots firmly into the stone floor, lowering his center of gravity. He hoisted the massive Shield of Ruin directly in front of him. When the massive wall of water crashed into him, the shield’s entropic aura violently went to work. It actively destroyed the kinetic energy and molecular structure of the magic, parting the massive wave completely down the middle. The torrent rushed harmlessly past his flanks, leaving him completely bone-dry amidst the rushing flood.

And the moment the water level dropped, Barlan advanced. His left hand unequipped the shield and he gripped the Hammer of Ruin with both hands, bringing it down into the wet stone floor with catastrophic velocity.

BOOOOOOM!

The resulting shockwave carrying the Ruin spell didn’t just shatter the ground. The dark, decaying energy violently dispersed the remaining water in the room, vaporizing the moisture into thin air. The concussive blast wave tore through Ephelia’s footing, shattering her balance and sending her flying helplessly into the air.

Recognizing the mid-air vulnerability, Barlan didn’t give her a chance to recover. Using his immense physical strength, he reeled back and forcefully launched the colossal Hammer of Ruin straight at the descending Magus.

The hammer tracked perfectly, colliding heavily with Ephelia’s torso mid-descent.

CRUNCH-BOOooM!

A devastating explosion of dark energy erupted upon impact, blasting the Grand Magus backward across the sanctum. She crashed violently against her ruined throne, the force leaving deep, glowing, crystalline cracks across her very skin as her very form began to fracture.

King’s HUD flashed aggressively, a bright crimson warning lighting up his field of vision. Ephelia’s massive health bar chunked down drastically, slipping right past the critical threshold.

[GRAND MAGUS EPHELIA — HP: 48%]