A ring of red light burst from the casket as the top came off.

  The stone squares lining the Sanctum chipped, the tapestries nailed into the top of the pillars lining the interior fluttered furiously. Blood from all over the Cathedral formed into an orb, shooting into the skeleton creature sitting atop its casket. Black wings covered its sides, long fangs jutted from its mouth, and red eyes pierced through darkness. Bones dressed its leather armor, and a crown made of bone rested on its head. A one handed single edged blade formed from the blood, coming to rest in its right hand.

  [Arjanax, The Blood Bone Coven Lord] (Boss)

  Tier: 1

  Level: 49

  HP: 35,000/35,000

  When blood wasn’t enough, bone came next.

  Floating forward, Arjanax rose then fell slowly, his feet clapping against the alter’s steps. His blood red eyes appeared transfixed on Luke, specifically, the necklace he wore.

  Sounding like he’d not spoken in ages, Arjanax said, “The lowest Coven Lord always cared too much for jewelry. I’ll bring you to rest in his place.”

  Cracking a bone, the structure ripped from Arjanax’s neck and spiked toward Luke blindingly fast. Reacting would be impossible for a hunter without reaching the first threshold.

  To the Reaver, the gesture barely gained a rise from him. A skillful tap from Xera, and it was avoided. But many more came in its place, all manipulated by Arjanax, coming from his very body.

  Multiple patterns revealed themselves in Luke’s vision.

  Left. Right. Duck. Two attacks from behind three in the front. Place Xera here and detonate ice there. A dance began—full speed from the start. Casually waving a hand, Arjanax imprinted a sigil onto Fleur, who had been sending screaming winds his way. A skeleton shot up, summoned beside Arjanax, then blood covered it, turning it into a raging Berserker. A blood pool was left behind as it took its first steps, hefting a bone axe and charging toward Fleur.

  Never the type to willingly give the enemy momentum, Luke commanded ice to swirl around the Berserker’s feet, ruining its trajectory at every turn.

  Clashing its blood sword against Xera, Arjanax cackled as shards of bone and blood began to gather around him, “A twin feast, the Spire may chain me, god’s livestock, but my power remains too much for any pair of you sent to these depths as it always has been.”

  Due to being marked by the sigil, Fleur kept only using control abilities on the Berserker. Damage from her would heal the minion instead. Another blood pool spawned, Luke continued to observe Arjanax while locked in melee with him. He found his raw strength slightly below the boss but compensated with superior agility. Ice swept over the blood pools, shattering them at his command, then funneled to the Berserker, attaching to an arm before blowing it off.

  Eyes glancing at the building ice, growing more rapid than the blood swirling around him, Arjanax blasted crimson shards in a cone at Luke. Seeing potential futures came in clutch for the Reaver, he signaled Triple Step to his stable foot, avoiding the deadly spell.

  The shards caught onto a pillar, removing the affected chunks from existence. One shard sliced into Fleur’s lower arm, causing it to bleed profusely. Soothing Winds fought against the injury, slowing its course in a tug of war between healing and bleeding.

  Bone spines protectively layered Arjanax, while others assisted his attacks centered around the blood sword. Finding himself occupied, Luke centered his attention on the multiple attack attempts coming his way every fraction of a second. For a time, a stalemate appeared, but the grimace on Arjanax’s face morphed for the worse as it dragged on.

  Its Cathedral, usually a land of blood and bone, quickly became a winter playground. Ice ruined the blood pools, stuffed the other morsel’s wound, and ate at his bones. Arjanax attempted to take a moment to gloat, perhaps used to dominance when some foolish party released him.

  It was a mistake. Putting time into anything other than keeping the Reaver at full capacity swung the battle further away from Arjanax’s favor. A circle of blue, ice covered runes attached to the boss, weakening it significantly, slowing it further, and interfering with its blood control.

  Stuffing ice to the minor cuts he endured leading up to this move, Luke internally celebrated, Took me a couple tries to pull it off in a proper gap, but applying Elementalization to Essence Bond was a success.

  Fully flustered, Arjanax flapped his wings at full power, attempting to avoid Luke and skewer Fleur with his bone spines. Catching the move before completion, the Reaver blasted an Essence Lance to Arjanax’s back, crashing the boss to the floor. Capitalizing on the exposed back, Luke rent Xera across one of the wings, leaving it half crippled.

  Blood morphed, coating the wing, beginning to heal it. Stopping the measure, Luke frosted the blood, then shed it, turning it all to dust. Reading his opponent two or three steps ahead, Luke methodically countered the mechanic, ruining blood pools, repeatedly stopping the Berserker, and infecting Arjanax with his ice. He squeezed in a Siphon cast and maintained the three stack maximum. Arjanax displayed an annoying level of regeneration, leaving Luke in the position to widdle away at the outsized health pool slowly. Supported by Siphon, rather than become exhausted, the Reaver became energized.

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  Another set of blood shards coned from Arjanax, and this attempt also failed. To add insult to injury, Luke managed to manipulate the ice under the Berserker, forcing it to cover Fleur from the incoming shards.

  “Technique holder, you’re kind always runs dry. Your overconfidence will turn against you.” Arjanax said, words biting since his teeth failed to.

  Slashing Xera forth in an icy arc, Luke’s assault was stopped by a legion of bones surrounding Arjanax. Stealing a glance at Fleur, the elf appeared fine enough on her own, but too occupied by the Berserker to do much else but send a Soothing Wind his way.

  Killing off the internal complaints that this fight would be easier alone—because it would be—Luke sought ways to break the deadlock. Shattering axe swings reverberated around the Cathedral as gale winds met them.

  Aware Essence Bond would vanish soon on Xera for a short period, Luke pushed his speed, side stepping the Blood Blade, deflecting the bone spines using a one handed deflection with Xera, and finally plunging an iced hand onto Arjanax’s shoulder. Sucking up half the ice covering the Cathedral, Luke released it onto the exposed shoulder.

  Despite having a Vampiric vitality, the shoulder vanished from this world, as exploding winter took its place, crippling Arjanax’s left arm. The Vampire released a screech, and blood waves summoned themselves to the injured site.

  Freezing the summoned blood, Luke saw as Arjanax’s eyes widened in disbelief—the blood at its command—turned into ice dust. The move broke the deadlock, but strained Luke’s vessel, his control over Elementalization weakened temporarily, and Essence Bond vanished on Xera, as it always would.

  A spine bone shattered, swirling around Arjanax protectively, extraditing the boss away from the Reaver. Blood heated from within the boss as it growled, “You must be one of them. Grasper to law beyond the reach of my kind. Blood and Bone will bury you all the same. I applaud your ability to push me this far with so few, aberrant.”

  Reminded of Fleur’s rundown before the fight, Luke scanned the field, and quickly covered a recently covered blood pool with his ice, ejecting it into the air right in time.

  “It matters not, defiant flesh. Taste what a master of blood can unleash.”

  A chant escaped Arjanax’s throat, and the blood within exploded out, bones peppering the literal wave consuming the Cathedral. Luke stabbed Xera into the floor, holding on, while creating an ice wall in front of himself. He exploded ice on Fleur’s side, rocketing him into his grasp. The move injured the elf, but what came next proved far more fatal if he left her out to rot.

  The blood split the Berserker in half, slicing all pillars apart similarly while crushing Luke’s ice wall underfoot. Luke used Silent Domain to stop the onslaught, but the tool failed him here. It only stilled the blood around him, but not completely.

  Above the Reaver, the ceiling began to cave in, and he had to slice Xera upwards to avoid a stone chunk from crushing him and Fleur. Despite his preparations, the bloodstream, spiked by bone, cut into his legs and arms, unable to be protected by Xera.

  By the end of the grand spell, Luke found his arms eviscerated, but functional. Fleur’s wind barrier shattered on contact with the grand spell; she heaved and moaned. The elf proved tenacious; however, she used her technique on a vertical twister and crashed it into Arjanax.

  Reapplying Infusion and Essence Bond, the Reaver rushed up Arjanax, cutting the distance with Triple Step once appropriate. Arjanax’s shoulder recovered dramatically, reforming wriggling muscle while failing to function fully. Luke attempted another attributed Essence Bond and applied a regular one upon not quite managing.

  Detonating ice to his side, Luke twisted faster than the boss could keep up with, sinking Xera into the shoulder once more, and in practiced fashion, froze it whole, including the left arm this time. Bone spines tried to skewer the Reaver. One ripped into his upper leg, stopped by momentum loss once it met bone.

  Bits of blood sputtered from Luke’s mouth, Arjanax controlled it to try and heal the crippled wing. Laughing from enjoyment, the Reaver formed an Essence Lance, drilling it into Arjanax’s upper back, detaching both his wings.

  They fell to the floor, shattered to pieces once frozen by Luke’s ice. Panicked, Arjanax summoned its Blood Berserker, applying the sigil to the Reaver. A white-hot sensation overcame Luke’s left ring finger as the Patchwork Ring activated, fixing his leg. A searing pain came with it, but Luke’s pain tolerance grew enough to cut any impediment that would typically cause.

  Bone spikes shot from the ground, and it was thanks only to Luke’s predictive sight that he successfully avoided getting impaled. He Triple Stepped, shoving aside Fleur, saving the mage from that fate. Her Soothing Winds were hard at work, undoing the damage she’d accumulated over the fight. Sensing oncoming pressure, Luke activated Polar South.

  Twin spines rained down strikes on Luke, and the Berserker assisted its master, heaving its axe in a spin. The move proved too full of holes to Polar South’s insight; ice caught the most weight-bearing foot and ruined the ankle. The Reaver ducked under the oncoming axe, and swung Xera from the Berserker’s hip to its left shoulder, slicing it into two halves. It began to heal, although impeded by the frost.

  Timing Triple Step and kinetic force from ice control, Luke flew through the air to Arjanax. The spines and blood blade stopped Xera, and Arjanax’s experienced defense halted the assault. Luke, however, had anticipated this turn of events.

  Rather, he saw them. Insight proved truly maddening at the next moment; Luke reformed Xera into a wand, forcing the three objects to slide past him. Temporal North activated, and an Essence Lance rotated through Arjanax’s center, creating a massive hole.

  Now, it was Arjanax who sputtered blood from his mouth. It’s usual mastery over the sanguine mutilated by the Essence Lance.

  Concentrating essence on Xera’s wand tip, Luke blasted it to the exposed hole, and gathered ice into the essence, freezing Arjanax’s internals. Casually snapping a finger while settling his eyes on the sorry figure before him, Luke’s Elementalization ripped the boss from the inside out.

  Its health pool dropped like thunder from heaven, brilliant for an instant, leaving a scorch mark as the only reminder of its fleeting existence. Forming an ice creation on his free hand, Luke clutched Arjanax’s skull and crushed it.

  An enraged growl escaped Arjanax as the boss turned into a blood pile. When Luke swept the vital liquid into a frosted substance, and shattered it, the growl turned into a death screech.

  Turning Xera back into a wand, Luke swept the sword out while orienting back to Fleur.

  “Easy. Did you take notes, Fleur? This is what’s expected of a Defier.”