Martin and Celine met us as we got to our feet after the explosion. The whole place was covered in flames at this point. Martin had been able to block the attack given how spread out it was, for him and Celine both, and Sarah and Jessie had Cark to hold back the fire. The same could not be said of the ghost cavalry that had been arriving as the Bone Wyvern went up. The wave of poison fire had mostly been funneled up into the air, and it ate through a massive chunk of the spectral forces, pushing the others to bank away hard.

Our friends looked a bit worried. Martin checking us over for damage. "Are you two alright? That was crazy, what the hell happened in there?" He looked up at the column of flame with wide and disturbed eyes. Which was fair, I was a bit disturbed too, the structure I was in had just exploded. That was a first for me, and I honestly wasn't sure I'd have survived it from inside the belly of the beast so to speak.

I turned to look behind us, not sure exactly how that worked. "Also, not to look a gift Wyvern in the mouth but why the hell aren't we dead? Because the explosion really should have gone the same distance in every direction shouldn't it?" Hell I wasn't sure why it had been so volatile. I guessed all the stats had been in that heart and some mixture of poison fire and dark magic had caused some kind of destabilizing effect and made it go critical or something.

Callie narrowed her eyes at the cloud of flame for a second before they widened. "The pocket space. That heart was at the top of the Wyvern skeleton, right up against the spine. When it blew up was the only direction that wasn't impeded by a whole bunch of unstable expanded space. It must have swallowed most of the blast. The top was right against the outside though so it just blasted right through and all the excess flame vented up."

I blinked, that was actually pretty likely. Why hadn't I thought of that. Still it was easily the best outcome here. The venting flames wiped out a big chunk of the ghosts and the drifting wisps of poison ghost fire that floated around after the blast were keeping the sky clear for now. If we could kill this damn Lich we could get the hell out of here before any stronger ghosts could reinforce and avoid that whole ghost army issue entirely.

Benny shrugged. "Oh well. I mean, bullet dodged. Let's go help stop our friends from dying and then we can get the hell out of here." That seemed to wake everyone else up and we took off at a dead sprint in the direction where the others were fighting. Given Cark was raining down blue armaggedon on the Lich and it was pretty damn visible. With our Might making it over to them was pretty much a non issue, and we didn't even have to hold back because the H rankers wouldn't be much good here.

As we'd seen from further away, Cark was the one mainly engaging the Lich. He had waves of fire coming off him like an aura or something, and he was intercepting most of the magic the thing was hurling. It was actually kind of hard to see, since the Lich was using that same ghostly blue flame burning in his eyes, and Carks fire was also blue. That was where the similarities ended though, since based on the ground nearby, the Lich was using some kind of cold flame that froze everything it touched and sapped energy.

As one might imagine, that wasn't really viable against Cark in small quantities, but the staff the Lich was carrying seemed to massively boost the power of his flames, allowing him to output about three times the amount Cark was using, which was barely keeping our pyrokinetic at bay. The Lich probably would have engaged physically before this, but Jessie had wrapped his legs in a dense tangle of glowing green vines the seemed be actively repelling the cold fire, and Cark had him too distracted to focus on them.

Sarah was in the background, getting in slaps with her holy hand from a distance. She was only H rank, so sadly the attack didn't have as much effect as she would like, but it broke the Lichs concentration, and it was kind of hilarious see it get slapped in the face whenever it wasn't paying attention. The entire mess seemed to mostly be a stalemate from what I could tell. I felt myself start to flag and cursed. My Afterburner had worn off, which meant I was now in a weakened state. The timing on that wasn't great.

Despite that I still had all my active skills still going. Leaf on the Wind and my poison fire were both going to active for a few more minutes. Even slightly weakened I should be able to help. The main issue here was that there was no fucking way I was getting close to the Lich in the middle of that weird clashing hot and cold firestorm, and neither were either of my friends. So we slipped over to talk to Sarah and Jessie, who were off to one side together since Jessie was able to restrain the Lich from a distance with her vines.

Jessie was pretty distracted, but her face lit up when she saw us out of the corner of her eye. "Oh thank the revenant you guys are ok. What the hell happened to that dragon thing. You guys went in and it just exploded." She paused for a second and then shook her head. "Never mind, tell me later. Any ideas on how you guys can help here? Because that poison fire is going to fade soon and we really need to kill this thing before it does so we don't get mobbed with an army of angry ghosts."

Callie bit her lip. "I can try some shadow constructs. I'm not sure how they'll interact with the flames...either type of flames. I suspect the cold fire won't be as much of a problem, so our best bet is probably to have me attack from behind." She turned to me questioningly. "Any chance you could manage a Mercy Kill through me? I don't think we've tried that one, and I know you're running low." She wasn't wrong, my charges for the day were dangerously depleted, but I still had some in me.

I reached out for her hand, taking a deep breath. In my weakened state this was going to be much harder than usual. I'd never tried flexing my abilities like this when I was compromised. Still, she was right that this would be a powerful combination. Since her constructs stuck around the power boost should theoretically count the actual construct as the attack and boost the power behind it. At least that was that made the most sense to me. If that happened then it would completely change her combat capabilities when we were working together.

I squeezed down on her fingers and triggered Mercy Kill. This was my nineteenth charge of the day, leaving me with six left and even with the cushion, in my weakened state post Afterburner trying to alter the shape of the skill was agonizing. I gritted my teeth and pushed past the pain, but my head was throbbing. I made a mental note not to try to do this when I was weakened again, it was hands down the most painful thing I'd ever experienced. Like digging around in my own brain with a rusty spoon covered in lemon juice.

Still despite the pain I managed to shove the skill over onto Callie. As I did I got a feel for exactly why this was so difficult. Mercy Kill was single use and meant to be a finisher. It was a compact and dense skill that wasn't intended to cover two people or even to be altered. It had one purpose, to crush the enemy with overwhelming force. That made it much harder to mold or shape it, and when I finally did get it over to Callie it was by literally brute forcing the whole damn skill out of myself in a highly unpleasant way.

I hadn't noticed any real variations in skill manipulation aside from difficulty, but it seemed like not all skills were the kind you could alter as you saw fit. Some skills were more malleable and more fluid. It made me eager to try to study the ways the skills shifted and moved and how they related to their natures. If I could understand the makeup of the way the energy formed a skill from DS Mastery not only would I be able to rank up DS Mastery, I might even be able to someday learn one of the skills well enough to turn it into an independent Skill I could use without charges.

Of course that was a problem for well in the future. Much like own ability I needed to study the way this worked and learn to use it to its fullest when I had the time. For now I just stepped back, more than happy with Callie getting full access to Mercy Kill, and once it was gone she pulled my hand to stop me from falling over as my legs wobbled a bit from exhaustion. I was happy to let her handle this surprise attack or whatever, because I was barely able to stand. I needed a minute before I was ready to take off with the others.

I could see Callie almost vibrating with the energy inside her, and I wondered how it felt to have another persons skill in you. Which made me kind of consider how it felt to have my OWN skill in me. I hadn't really considered it before, and it was one more aspect of my skills to add to the pile. I shook off the thoughts and focused on the battle, and on my girlfriends contribution to it. She shifted into stealth, and her skill was high enough even I had trouble following her, though I gritted my teeth and activated Seek Hidden despite the drain so I could watch.

She circled around behind the back of the battle unnoticed, though that may have been less about the stealth and more about the fact that the Lich was wrapped up in life vines and trying to stop Cark from lighting him on fire while getting holy slapped in the face every time he left an opening. Still she was like a living shadow as she circled around behind him to get in position. Once she was there she reached out to the darkness around her. I expected a big wave of shadow energy to smash him from behind but Callie had clearly been considering the best way to do this.

Despite the huge amount of shadowy power she was gathering instead of just hurling it all like that she started to condense it. She pulled more and more of the shadows together, twisting them as she did. Despite condensing the shadow construct didn't get smaller as she layered on more and more energy, and the final product was a long spiral spike or tightly wound darkness. With the utmost care Callie held the shaking construct, so densely packed that she was barely able to hold it together, and began to inch forward slowly, moving in complete silence as she took advantage of the light show to maximize her stealth. As soon as she got within range she stopped, took a deep breath, and drove the lance of darkness forward.

As it sped toward the Lichs back the shadows started to come unwound, causing it spin rapidly like a drill at the moment of impact. The Lich threw its head back and roared. As it did, Sarah grabbed its face with her holy hand, keeping its mouth open, and as its attention wavered and the waves of cascading blue cold fire flickered, Cark whirled his whole offensive into a tight vortex as wide around as a fist and shoved it right down the undead bastards screaming throat, immolating him from the inside.