Only one foe remained on the field of battle: the woman in the blue dress who had ran to get clear of the fight. She was holding a large icicle like a javelin, but was frozen in mid-throw, not by any debuff, but by terror at what she’d just seen happen to all her friends.

Hirrus began to walk towards her, and she dropped the icicle and tried to run.

There wasn’t anywhere for her to go, though. Since she had run as far as possible to pelt him from long range, she was stuck in the corner of the property, with the giant steel wall at her back. Without anywhere to go, her fight-or-flight instinct failed, and she instead started to press herself against the corner of the metal bulwark, as if trying to push herself through to the other side on willpower alone.

“Where is Cerberus?” Hirrus asked.

“Jesus Christ,” she yelped, kicking at the dirt ground. Hirrus wasn’t sure if she thought she was actually going to push the wall over, or somehow squeeze through the expertly-welded corner of the bulwark.

“I don’t know where that is,” Hirrus said. He picked up speed, arms spread, his weapons ready to strike.

“Uh, uh,” she started to stammer. “Aer did this clip two hours ago in front of all of us. Fuck me, why wasn’t I paying closer attention?”

“Where is Cerberus?” Hirrus repeated. Following Nidra’s advice, he gathered from context clues that ‘Jesus Christ’ was probably not her location. “Your opportunity to tell me is slipping away very rapidly.”

“Do I get to live?” she said quickly. Finally, she stopped kicking the ground and stilled, though she was still pressed into the corner, like a spider trying to avoid the inevitable swing of a shoe. “I’ll tell you everything I know if I get to live.”

“No,” Hirrus said, “you don’t.”

“Then why the fuck would I-”

Hirrus’s blades struck sparks off the steel wall behind her. Three huge clefts were cut into the metal, just deep enough for the blood to pool there.

Hirrus took a deep breath.

The monster within him was roaring in satisfaction.

He had been an engine of destruction. Even these - the best of the best - couldn’t slow him down.

The monster insisted that he had never been in any danger.

But he knew better. In truth, his victory had been a stroke of luck. Potentially, infinite strokes of luck. None of his foes had been wearing gear or wielding Arcana that would counteract the Calcified debuff. The group had underestimated him at a critical juncture, assuming that the powerful slow offered by the woman in the red-and-black armor would keep him locked in place. If he hadn’t specifically had Rapid Rip to position himself optimally for Melisune’s Eye, their combined damage against him would have been dramatically increased. And if the fight had taken place around a giant hole blasted into the steel wall, the barrier would have been used against him to prevent him from afflicting so many at once.

He could have died. It was only by their bullheaded confidence and his own foresight that he had been able to defy their expectations and outmaneuver them. Fighting so many foes wielding so much power had required tremendous luck. Fortunately, he had only one target remaining. He just had to find her, and it seemed sensible to assume that without backup, he would make short work of her.

From what he knew, she must have been in the bunker somewhere. They’d come here to hide out from him. It would have been silly if her entire raid team was here to defend her, and she was elsewhere.

The stone structure was mostly intact. Civilization Buster had split it up the middle, but the structural integrity of the building wasn’t reliant on the damaged or missing components. The raiders had emerged from the left side, mostly, save for the shirtless man who had gone to answer the door in response to some alarm Hirrus had not detected.

Hirrus stepped into the split bunker, and went right. If Cerberus had not responded to the same alarm, perhaps she was on the other side. The interior doors were wooden, not stone or steel, and didn’t appear to beven be locked.

Opening the door on the left of the scorched foyer, Hirrus found-

Hand. A hand locked around Hirrus’s throat. Despite his height in comparison to the relatively petite woman beyond the door, he was lifted up off of his feet.

“There is no meme,” she snarled. “Get in the command grab.”

A pulse of energy crackled around Hirrus, and he suffered a sudden and unexpected ten thousand damage. He was unable to react before the woman flung him back, sending him slamming into the wooden door on the opposite side. It splintered under the impact, and he slid across the stone floor into the room beyond.

The woman who had thrown him stepped up into the doorway. Despite Hirrus’s expectations, she was shockingly small. Hirrus was nearly two feet taller than her, and despite her broad hips and ample bosoms, her waist was waspishly narrow, making her look grossly underweight and unhealthy. Considering she had just hurled him through a door, he was forcefully reminded that strength came from the BUR stat, not from physical size.

Her hair was a huge unruly mane, puffed up around her head and cascading down over her shoulders in a way that was almost bestial, blending in with the thick furred mantle that draped over her shoulders. Beneath it she wore a thin black tank top, cinched at the waist by a wide belt that accentuated her unhealthy figure. Below the waist, her equipment was matching metal armor, glittering silvered steel marred by flecks and streaks of brown-red artfully designed to look like dried blood. Thick leather bracers on her wrists were decorated with a bone inlay, patterned to look like a fearsome skull-like visage.

She flexed the fingers of her right hand as she stood in the doorframe, her other hand holding a crude-looking iron maul that looked like it probably weighed as much as she did.

“Cerberus,” Hirrus guessed.

Instead of responding like a normal person, she barked at him and lunged, her hammer swinging up into the air before coming down at him. While she’d caught him off-guard, Hirrus still had the bulk of his physical buffs active, and the move speed let him roll away from the blow.

Before he could find his feet, though, the impact of her hammer on the floor shattered more than just the rock where Hirrus had lain. The stone floor crumbled and cracked apart. There was a chamber below, and both he and the woman tumbled down as her strike obliterated the ground beneath them.

Hirrus landed on his feet, and immediately moved in towards the woman. His hooked blade lashed out and scored a critical hit, but somehow it only did ten thousand damage. It seemed impossible to hit her so hard and deal so little. At the very least, the flickering flames across her skin told him that The Ravening Burn was still applying the damage over time effect to her.

Her hammer came across in a swing that was more an attempt to ward him off than strike him, but he was too fast. The combined movement speed and attack speed of his buffs let him weave under the swipe and bring his greataxe across to crash into her waist. The blow dealt four thousand three hundred damage, and immediately on its tail came a double-strike for an additional three thousand two hundred.

She roared and flames roared with her. Hirrus’s hooked blade swept in but passed through her harmlessly as a ring of fire erupted around her. He barely managed to duck back fast enough to avoid the column of fire that filled the air, though the heat alone was enough to cause the sparse furniture in the room to catch alight.

“Come on,” she said as the flames died down, a cruel smirk on her face. “I can do this all day.”

“No,” Hirrus said, “you can’t.”

He swept his hand at her, using Ascension’s Sands. The blade of sand shot across the space between them, striking her for five thousand damage, afflicting her with Blind for a few seconds, which would tremendously reduce her accuracy.

As he did, though, she flung her hand out as well, and a ring of shimmering silver shot from her and towards Hirrus. It was fast, but not so fast that he couldn’t duck under it, but as soon as he did, it ricocheted off the wall behind him with a loud ringing sound, slamming into his back, dealing five thousand damage.

“Try me, minuteman,” she said. “If you think you can finish me this fast, I’ll be ending this one on top!”

Hirrus wasn’t sure if she meant for that to be as lewd as it sounded. But considering that she had to be at death’s door after he’d done over twenty thousand damage, the bravado was about to be short-lived. He lunged.

Despite being blinded, her hand snapped up, unerringly closing around his throat again. He tried to swipe his weapons at her as she lifted him off the ground, but his body wouldn’t respond while she was choking him.

That blast of crackling energy surged through him for ten thousand damage again, and once more she flung him away, sending him slamming into the wall. This time, though, she didn’t give chase, she stayed where she was, and Hirrus watched as the crackling red energy suffused her form.

The smoking wounds his attacks had left closed up as he watched, and she inhaled deeply with visible satisfaction.

“Good to the last drop,” she said, licking her lips, visibly uninjured. “Like I said. I can do this all day, boy.”