Potential plans flashed through Maya's mind even as she continued casting her own spells with innate energy instead of the magic clinging to her hands.

The magic and crystals were clearly some kind of gimmick. Sometimes, boss mechanics like that could be worked around, beaten down with less effective attacks through sheer quantity. Others could not be avoided. She really felt like this was the former, though. She had a strong sense that it was possible to get out of here with the magic intact. It would be harder, but not impossible.

Could the boss be tricked somehow? Was there some stabby ceiling spike they could drop on him? Or perhaps she could sacrifice herself to hold aggro while the others grabbed the magic and ran?

No. There was no convenient ceiling spike, and the hanging crystals were too small to do any real damage if dislodged; they were to provide light and ambient atmosphere, not use as weapons. And if she died here she wouldn't get the luck bonus that she needed to work with her spell creation. She'd barely managed Runestrike, which was as simplified a merger of basic spells as they came. Well, beyond the basic element change of Wind Whisper. Combining the higher level more complicated spells would require a lot more luck, and a lot more research. She couldn't afford to waste the chance to bring down the boss and claim her bonus.

Not even at the cost of so much free magic.

She could try talking to the boss, shout for them to stand down, come to an agreement. She could learn so much from him, she felt certain. But though it would be a good choice, an excellent choice perhaps, it didn't quite outweigh her need to succeed in her quest and obtain that luck bonus.

Maya sighed, resigned. Killing the boss had to be priority one. Saving as much magic as possible came in very close second, but still second.

Her energy ran out, or at least had depleted to the point where she could no cast anything above a Wind Whisper. She let her casting lapse and ran a finger thoughtfully through the semi-liquid power coating her arm.

Beyond, the huge green lizardine - or was he something else? He seemed to have spikes and horns unlike any lizardine player she’d seen, maybe some kind of mutant humanoid dragonkin? - stood before his throne, throwing out blasts of solid light that tore gouges into the floor, hissing and melting through the stone, in a sequential pattern around himself like an eight-pointed star of death. They rippled out from him in rushing waves, each as wide as Maya’s body, but that did mean that anyone further than a few strides from him could easily evade the straight and relatively slow-moving attacks. Big and deadly, but these were more to make people move. Negating the advantage Heart of Magma would offer with this much magic around.

Maya jumped out of the way of the light beams, then counted down mentally while the boss lit up one of his many knives until it glowed gold-white and hard to look at, then threw it at Hunter. As it flew, the starburst knife remained completely straight, not dropping or wavering. Hunter jumped aside, but instead of falling to the ground behind him the knife continued on straight until it bounced off the far wall and rebounded off in a random direction.

He threw the starburst blade ten more times, beginning to scatter the arena with more and more of the dangerous little obstacles. Maya tried not to get distracted by the shinies and continued timing his major attack blasts. Twelve seconds between casts, and the attack sequence itself took half that as he fired one line of light after the other, turning in place…

A little less than a second per blast, three seconds for four attacks, and they always flowed in a circle, either turning to his right or his left by an even increment.

Star and Ben had stopped relying on energy and were casting spells in rapid succession.

Right; she'd forgotten that casting with raw magic instead of using the ability system meant no cooldowns. Their physical speed was their only limitation, and they were moving plenty fast.

Runescale ran up to the boss and cast Runestrike, but its lightning stun effect didn't do anything to the giant dragon-man. Instead, Runescale stood in his self-inflicted paralyzed while the boss blasted him point blank with that searing beam, holding it on the helpless mage until his health bar went grey.

Maya winced, her joke spell not seeming quite as funny now. Though to be fair she’d never expected him to try using it in combat, much less with so much success that he felt comfortable using it in a boss fight.

Then she squinted at the boss, whose attacks seemed to be gaining in power and speed the longer the fight went on. In a flash, she understood. The whole fight was on an enrage timer. A gradual one, that would slowly ramp up until he was dealing too much damage to be survived.

The magic on the crystal stalagmites was there so that they could kill him fast enough without relying on energy and stamina recharging.

Maya set her beak determinedly. She wasn't going to give up. She still intended to walk out of here with at least some of the magic intact.

She counted eight distinctively magic-covered crystals scattered around the boss room. She'd depleted two, Star and Ben were each on their second, leaving two more. Runescale didn’t seem to have gotten the memo; if he’d taken any magic before his untimely demise, she didn’t see it.

Even with all of the remaining magic combined, it would probably only fill a single terrarium once she got it home to her workshop, but every bit counted. Especially if she planned to start working on adapting the higher level spells. She needed every dram of power she could get.

Well, time to quit standing around thinking.

She drew her daggers and charged, stabbing as fast as she could. She swapped in her few melee abilities, but didn't engage them yet. The switching penalty on changing active abilities during combat made them inefficient to use when she was perfectly capable of utilizing freeform attacks instead.

Maya stabbed and slashed and screamed and stabbed some more, successfully drawing aggro away from Star.

Oh, oops.

Snappy continued attacking the boss's legs while Hunter focused on hit and run like she’d taught him, evading the bursts of superheated light that lashed out with increasing speed.

It was easy enough to avoid his big attacks as long as you paid attention to his activation sequences, but one slip and Star's health dropped by nearly half. Maya couldn’t help but envy it; she wanted that light spell, the slow laser burst, whatever it was called.

They'd been at this for over a minute, the seconds drawn out in the chaos of battle, and still the boss's health remained far, far too close to full.

Maya's continued stabbing and increased shouting were of no help. She may be able to override aggro in bursts, but they were all dealing about the same amount of damage overall and she couldn't hold it indefinitely.

Her ability to dodge, amplified by her investment into momentum stats, the agility bonus on her armor, and her luck's hyper-awareness bordering on precognition combined to render Maya all but untouchable. She was very lucky the boss didn't have any area damage attacks. Aside from his beam, which was wide and powerful, but slow and imprecise, he also had single-target motes of light he could flick out at them, which when missing their target bounced around the area until they hit someone, but were easy to predict and could be stopped by any physical barrier. As the fight tempo continued to increase, however, these bouncing lights came faster and faster, beginning to fill the area with more damaging mines than Maya could track even with her luck. She needed a safe spot where they couldn't reach her, and it only took a moment for her to realize the solution. They all remained on the same plane, bouncing horizontally, not vertically.

She leapt into the air, grabbed the back of the boss's throne, and pulled herself up above the level of the bouncing lights. Safe. From here, she pelted him with throwing knives, dealing somewhat less damage but confident in her ability to evade any attacks he may level at her.

The rest of the party wasn't faring so well. Star's health fell steadily, and Ben was fully occupied with defending himself against the bouncing lights. At least his Sparkburst was helping there, and Maya absently tried to recall the formula. She'd corrected it, done the tweaks that moved it from theoretical to working. She hadn't ever cast it herself, but if she could replicate it...

And she still needed to track Eleona down and get her shield. And ask the academy groups for their spell lists.

Mentally cursing herself for not laying the groundwork in advance for when a day like today came around, Maya continued throwing knives and watched the quantity in her inventory ticking down one by one. At this rate, she'd run through all her remaining blades before the boss reached half health. It wouldn't be enough, especially if Star and Ben went down.

She needed an edge.

The magic on her hands glistened suggestively, but she couldn't bring herself to use it. There was another way out. She was certain. Another solution. She just had to find it.

Hunter yelped in sudden panic as one of the myriad floating lights stung his flank, then Snappy jumped in the air to interpose herself between him and a second. Maya knew they wouldn't last much longer, and silently thanked them for their loyal efforts. Maybe Snappy didn't deserve a reprimand after all. She was certainly proving herself now, whatever her hesitation earlier.

Maya glanced down at the dagger still held in her off hand. Something Xaneta had mentioned... rangers soulbinding their arrows, for easy retrieval. Her Unique daggers were already soulbound, weren't they? And they would certainly deal more damage than those throwing knives were.

Once, Maya had spent all day learning to throw a sword to give herself an edge in an arena fight. Throwing knives were weighted differently, intended to be thrown, and using a weapon intended for an entirely different fighting style as a missile tended to end poorly.

But she had no better plan, and nothing to lose.

She swapped out her throwing knives for her second soulbound dagger, and threw them both at the boss's torso.

One missed, the other bounced off him hilt-first. Maya stared at them a long moment, willing them to return, trying to figure out how to access the easy retrieval options. The answer came to her in an instant, and she mentally tapped them in her equipment. They rematerialized in her hands, as though she were drawing them from her inventory, disappearing in the same instant from the floor where they'd fallen.

Maya grinned, jumped into the air to avoid a light beam that swept across where she'd been standing, then threw the daggers again.

This time, both bounced off the target, and returned to her hands before they could hit the floor.

Starstar's health bar went grey.

Maya knew she should probably cut her losses and run, but she felt giddy with the certainty of success, felt the potential future gleaming before her if she only stuck to it.

Hunter yelped again, too slow to evade as the boss whirled on him as he charged for the attack, taking two starbursts to the face. He got in one final chomp before falling to the ground, his bar grey.

"Quit messing around with knives and start casting!" Ben shouted, his voice tense. He'd cleared the final stalagmite now, and stood hurling Frost Spike after Frost Spike at the boss - whose health finally dropped below 60% - while his Sparkburst worked valiantly to destroy any of the increasingly common starlight knives spinning across the room wildly.

Maya ignored him, throwing her daggers one after the other in rapid succession, summoning each back to her hand the moment it hit. Most bounced off, but a few flew straight enough to pierce instead of allowing the weight of the pommel to turn them into glorified stone-throwing.

She could feel his glower, his loathing, his unforgiving judgment, as Ben's last sliver of health vanished.

"So it is down to you, and it is down to me," Maya said as the boss turned his full focus onto her.

Well, not quite. Snappy remained, her health below 30%, but her shell proved itself startlingly resilient against the boss's light-based attacks. And her relatively short stature meant that as Maya remained above the level of the bouncing starburst blades, Snappy remained safely below them.

Still, when she closed in on the boss and snapped at his ankles, he did kick her viciously away, dropping her health another noticeable chunk.

Maya left her to her own devices, trusting her pet to work for their best interests, while she continued practicing with her dagger-throwing.

This time, she started focusing on the ability creation option the moment she prepared to throw, canceling the ability creation each time she missed, until she hit. Now she had a proper throw dagger. But that wouldn't be good enough. She continued, until she could strike twice in succession. That made another ability. Still not enough. Keep throwing, keep chipping away. Even the bludgeoning style attacks dealt some damage, just not enough to move the bar noticeably. But as long as Maya remained up here, out of reach of the basic attacks, only worrying about the beams, she could keep this up indefinitely.

By the time she brought the boss down to 50% health, the entire room gleamed with an almost solid curtain of the gleaming lightbursts, bouncing off each other, dimming as they collided with the stalagmites, waiting for anything they could hit.

Snappy managed one last stab at the boss’s ankles before he gave her another violent kick, tossing her up and into the layer of ricocheting glowing knives. She didn't have time to even react, a brief explosion of light preceding her health bar dropping instantly to empty.

Maya silently thanked her, promising to do something nice for her loyal pets once she got out of this, and continued her attack.

Three of her throws struck blade-first, then four. She was getting the hang of it now, moving in a steady rhythm, increasing her tempo to match the enraged boss's. His searing beams melted the throne beneath her, dropping her an inch closer to the deadly carpet of light.

She wasn't doing enough damage. His health bar was dropping so slowly now she was the only one. There had to be something she could do...

Inspiration struck as she remembered something else Xaneta had told her. Wind beats darkness, not fire.

If the elements were paired, it stood to reason that... stone beat light.

She'd never actually used the Stone Ward spell, preferring attack to defence. After all, a dead enemy was better than an enemy that killed you slower.

But right now, she could really use some anti-light. The Stone Ward spell was a lower tier, beneath Magestrike or even Flame Hand, alongside Frost Bolt.

She could work with that. She cast Stone Ward once, focusing on the feeling of the somatic and magical elements that went into the formation of the armor that now coated her.

Maya drew a thin wavering line of magic down the blades of her daggers, holding the ability creation process in tension as she did so. If she failed...

She wouldn't fail. She'd learned enough. The spell would work.

She didn't pause to think, just pushed the magic into stone form, coating the blades with a sharp line of solid slate-grey rock that took on the jagged edges she'd drawn.

She paused just long enough to solidify the spell as an ability, Stone Blade, (which added a serrated stone edge to any weapon,) then triggered her fastest and most damaging thrown dagger ability. Five-blade Flurry Throw, snapping her blades out and back to her hands, then again, then again.

Retrieving them through the soulbond stripped them of the magic she'd coated them in, so only the first two strikes dealt extra damage. But they did deal extra damage. She could feel it, even if she couldn't see it.

And she happened to have a dual-throw ability as well, so that was fine. The cooldowns were asynchronous. She couldn't throw nearly as fast with the stone-coated blades as without, but the extra damage meant that even if only every third throw was amplified by magic, it was still better than sticking with the plain throwing.

Another beam sliced off another inch of throne, dropping her that much closer. She still wasn't doing enough. At this rate, she'd fall into the death zone long before finishing him off.

How many more sneaky clever things did she need to think of in order to finish this? There had to be a way out. A way to win.

She'd come this far, this close. No time to think, no one else to soak the damage...

The beams were coming so fast now, mere seconds between.

The others wouldn’t respawn in time to help her. The ground was entirely invisible now beneath the endless glow, countless sparks of deadly light ready to finish her in an instant.

There was nothing else she could perch atop. The stalagmites were too far away, even if they weren’t too pointy and slippery to use as a platform.

Her mind flashed back to another dungeon, another boss fight, where they’d been facing seemingly impossible odds. Tahpa had started passing around an item that hugely boosted health. She glanced in her inventory, scrolling up through her newest items, wildly hoping something there could save her. But she was already wearing her best sturdiness spec gear, to maximize the energy gained from her specialization.

She kept throwing knives as she mentally scrolled through page after page of items, her mind split between maintaining her barrage’s rhythm and searching frantically for any advantage she could scrape together.

Throw, throw, stoneblade, throw, jump, throw, stoneblade, throw, throw, jump…

She reached the top of her inventory, where her class items sat with her few remaining pieces of noob gear. Nothing more. No forgotten unique item that could save her, no miraculous exceptional she’d forgotten about crafting. Nothing. She’d have to simply rely on her luck, and hope…

Luck.

Maya grabbed her Trickster’s Orb. She hadn't used up all her available consultations for the month. "Can I visit really quick, just long enough to recover my energy, without this boss fight resetting?"

She could practically feel the Trickster’s approving laughter as the familiar invitation appeared. Maya exhaled in relief, and clicked accept. Light slashed into the throne beneath her even as the sound and brilliance grew distant and faded entirely as she was safely transitioned into the Trickster's private domain.