Friday, January 31, 2025

Page 3779

Historically, however, the confusion had also been something of a boon to himself. The more nuanced his ability was, the more difficulty his enemies would have in trying to understand everything of which he was capable. And of course, whenever he made a breakthrough with it, that only served to throw his opponents for even more of a loop.

Not that he could expect such convenience when fighting a feldeath.

Kallmakk was still giving him its full attention, obviously unbothered by the relative ease with which Dozer had deflected its attack. It was bearing down on him like a battleship.

And it was nearly the size of one, too. To his eyes, the creature was a great serpent with multiple humanoid heads. Each of its gazes was alight with black-and-white fire, and its hulking body moved in utterly impossible ways, tearing through the open water with no resistance whatsoever.

Worse still, its apparent lack of limbs was a deception. He knew only too well that long, stringy arms with razor sharp claws could appear from nowhere and flash across his vision in an instant, threatening to shred him with hardly a moment’s warning.

And there was even more to worry about, too, thanks to the other attackers. As much as Dozer had been anticipating this attention from Kallmakk, there could be little doubt that the Vanguardians had been waiting for this opportunity with even greater eagerness.

This was their chance, after all. To gang up on him all at once.

The flash freezing effects of Iceheart were already here, Dozer knew, with stealthier addendums on the way, no doubt. And the blasted Gargoyle was aiming to smother him with a tornado of mud and rock, if only to help conceal everyone else’s attacks. And all the little underlings were flinging their attacks at him, too, of course.

Kallmakk charging him head on. And every Vanguardian providing covering fire?

A bit much, even for him.

Thankfully, he had his own subordinates to pull some of the weight off his shoulders.

He could focus primarily on Kallmakk, Iceheart, and Sanko.

The flash freezing was countered easily enough with simple heat generation. That was one of the earlier tricks that Dozer had mastered, but it had of course required considerable refinement in order to repel the mind-numbing oppression of Iceheart’s power over absolute zero.

It was a good thing he’d developed that particular technique so much, too, because Dozer’s alteration power over inertia might have struggled to deal with such a problem, otherwise.

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