Li could not help but smile. In the months that they had bonded together, she had taken in his power directly from their soulbound link, and it showed. He could see himself through her. In the flowers and vines entwined around her wings. In her deer-like antlers. In the shadows flickering between her darker scales.

It made her all the more aware that she was indeed his daughter. Perhaps not by blood, but the one he chose and the one he decided to bear the responsibility of raising nonetheless. Seeing how his care had quite literally manifested on her, he could not help but feel proud, proud that she had grown so healthy, strong, and happy.

And also surprisingly, he did not realize how strong she had become. Now that her power lay fully bare before him, he could tell she had accelerated in strength far beyond his expectations. He estimated she was nearly level 70 where the Oculon was 60, if that, but even then, this fight could not be decided so easily.

He crossed his arms and looked as Tia fired off a blast of nature infused dragonfire from her mouth and antlers. The stream of verdant green energy did not so much flicker chaotically like a fire as it did shimmer, undulating in waves laced with green energy shaped into leaves.

This wave of breath crashed right into the Oculon, but it had the presence of mind to immediately erect its barrier. Its eyes all shone for a single instant of yellow before a purple dome surrounded its serpentine, floating form, and the green flame crashed against it, roaring all around it and engulfing it in a brilliant nova of light and flame.

"Keep at it, Tia!" said Li as he saw the green fire die down, unable to penetrate the barrier. And yet, the barrier was noticeably more transparent than before, leeched of its strength. "You have yet to fight a mage type, but they will always have barriers, and once that's down, they are powerless before a frontline fighter like you."

Tia nodded her draconic head before charging forwards again, her great emerald wings flapping and sending out surges of wind that blew back even the huge chunks of boulder near her with all the ease of a squall beating back garbage cans.

Strangely, Li noticed that the Oculon did not move backwards. That was entirely unlike the A.I. of the enemy in Elden World which recognized it was a mage type monster and sought to keep distance, raining down hell with its various eyes and rays. It seemed…hesitant, its eyes tracing Tia with its tracking lasers but still stealing a glance backwards, as if considering retreat but deciding against it.

Tia left caution to the wind and kept forwards, her head forward and legs tucked to her body as her wings shot her forwards like a living bullet. She had already resolved herself to trade blows with the Oculon, understanding inherently that trying evasive maneuvers would only keep her circling around the thing, unable to close distance.

The Oculon growled as its many eyes flashed again, this time with a myriad of colors. Blue, red, black, yellow – all different types of rays. They shot forwards in a deadly lightshow, and right as they landed, Tia braked midair, her tail flicking to stop her momentum as she curled her body in a compact, defensive ball as she tucked her head in and cloaked herself with her wings.

[Disintegration Ray]. [Destruction Ray]. [Freeze Ray]. [Shock Ray]. [Force Ray]. All of these exploded on contact with Tia in a multi-colored explosion.

Li raised a brow as he saw through the glimmering smoke of the blast. Roots had grown all across her wings, forming into two thick shields, though the rays had reduced them to scorched, frozen, crumbling and warped pieces. Nevertheless, the root shields had largely prevented the rays from damaging Tia herself, and she unfurled her wings, casting off the broken shields and setting herself back in flight.

This time, the Oculon did not have time to charge up another set of rays before Tia slammed into its barrier, her sizable weight amplified by momentum turning her into a living battering ram. At this range, however, the Oculon hesitated to fire off its full arsenal of rays for fear of including itself in the explosion, and instead its eyes flashed a light cerulean as they tried to channel a [Force Push] to telekinetically detach Tia.

But Tia was too quick. Her tail straightened out, the cross pattern of sharpened bone at its tip stiffening in the same way a knight's sword would tense before he struck. Green light so bright it was almost white wrapped tightly around the edges of the bone, forming into a rapidly accelerating edge of concentrated life energy.

She lashed her tail straight into the barrier, and it punched a hole right into it. Shards of purple psionic energy scattered to the ground as a widening hole cracked into the barrier, and the Oculon widened its many eyes in palpable surprise.

Tia did not waste any more time. She jammed an arm into the hole and growled as she broke the barrier apart from within. Without the barrier separating her, she dove right into the Oculon, savagely chomping down on its face, her many teeth crushing eyes and tendrils that exploded with bloody pops.

The Oculon roared in pain, its shrill, siren like voice laced with psionic agony that sent winds surging all around it, but Tia kept herself latched on, only biting in deeper as her claws sunk into the Oculon's body.

But the Oculon would not simply roll over and die this easily.

Tia herself hissed as the Oculon opened its mouth and bit down on her neck. By how Tia had positioned herself near the top of the Oculon's head, it did not have the leverage to close its jaws around the soft of middle of her longer neck, but instead clamped its many purple energy charged teeth onto the sturdier base of her neck.

Regardless, with several of its eyes popped or mangled and blood spurting freely from its face, the Oculon held on, using its psionically charged teeth to try and inflict a lethal blow on Tia. Tia, thoroughly surprised as she had only ever focused on the Oculon's eyes, reacted instinctively and shoved the Oculon away, unlatching from it and charging up another dragonbreath to unleash now that the Oculon's barrier was down.

But this time, the Oculon, blood spurting in heavy streams from its various mangled or popped eyes, saw the writing on the wall and backed away, its serpentine body wriggling as it manuevered backwards.

Tia fired her dragon breath, but it missed with the Oculon using its remaining eyes to cast a boosted [Force Pull] that diverted the trajectory of the fire down to the ground. The fire roared as it spread through the cratered floor, layering it with molten hot rock.

The Oculon turned around and casted [Phase Rush], using its psionic powers to wreath itself in a propelling aura that sent it hurtling back in full blown retreat.

"Don't let up, Tia!" said Li as he ran near her. "Barriers cost mana to create, and the fact that it is not generating another one means it is almost out."

In Elden World, mages after level thirty could opt in to be able to constantly generate a mana barrier to provide their normally frail defenses with a boost. This came, of course, at the cost of the fact that the barriers essentially placed a percentage tax on total mana pool to create, and re-creating the barrier would need time and the same amount of mana, not to mention that there were several barrier piercing skills and spells out there, meaning that most of the time, unless completely specialized in creating barriers, these shields were more insurance policy than anything else.

Li himself even as a mage did not use a barrier, for example, because he had decided to invest heavily into strength as well to access his druidic spells and shapeshifting which provided far more a defense than a mana barrier.

Monsters attuned with magic such as the Oculon could also create this kind of barrier, but they faced the same weaknesses. It created a barrier using undead energy, but Tia's life energy infused fire heavily damaged it, not to mention the fact that barriers naturally took more damage from head on physical attacks for they were more suited to tanking damage from spells.

With the barrier down, the Oculon had essentially wasted a significant chunk of its mana pool, leaving it only able to retreat for now. Tia, even if she did not know the intricacies of game mechanics, understood instinctively that the Oculon was moving back out of desperation in the same way a predator could smell the stench of fear on prey, and she was more than ready to chase the creature down for a death blow.

Tia loosed a light growl of understanding before she stretched out her wings and shot forwards in hot pursuit, Li following behind now with wings of his own.