25. Damage Types


    As soon as Ashvanaga pulled up onto the Wayfarers’ side of the river, it became clear that neither it nor its Ferryman had any intention of stopping for anyone.


    The castle rumbled onto the pink desert at top speed. The sandstorm billowed around it imperiously, obscuring and somehow enhancing the menace of its ‘architecture’. Serac and Zacko nevertheless sprinted head-first into the sandstorm, both intuiting that this boss fight would be as much a race as it was a contest of might.


    The Rakshasa dealt the opening salvo, unloading an entire cylinder as fast as she could and stopping only to allow her Stamina to recover. No matter who or what she’d been in a previous life, she hadn’t been born into her current one with the ability to sprint and aim a six-shooter at the same time. Thankfully, she was shooting at a big target, and all six of the unimbued bullets found their mark.


    [61!], [61!], [61!], [61!], [61!], [61!] -> [366!]


    After all that, Vetala’s HP bar (or was it Ashvanaga’s?) went down by only about a tenth. Pathetic damage! Yet, it only made sense that high Physical Mitigation would be one of the perks of having castle walls as your main line of defense.


    Even more disturbing than Ashvanaga’s high defense, however, was that six clean hits hadn’t been enough to Poise-break it. Which meant it was allowed to rumble on unimpeded, with Serac none the wiser as to how to slow it down. Yet, it only made sense that stupidly high Poise would be one of the perks of being a freaking castle.


    Physical couldn’t make a dent, but Serac still had another damage type to try. Sprinting and reloading at the same was another tricky skill she had to master on the fly, but for this particular experiment, she only needed the one cartridge to sit for her.


    [Chamber One: CATHARSIS]


    On the back of [152!] in self-damage, REVOLVER’s black flames of penitence found its target easily enough. It then dealt… only [33!] points of damage. The disappointment only worsened, as the whole attack fizzled out after just one hit.


    It finally happened: that suboptimal scenario Trippy Version 1 had warned her about. [Catharsis] had hurt Serac more than it’d hurt her enemy!


    So… the Infernal Steed’s castle walls were even more impervious to Infernal damage than to Physical. Not only that, but it was also flame-repellent to boot, cutting out [Catharsis] before the spell could complete its three-stage arson. Well, with that established, Serac was quickly running out of options.


    “There must be a weak spot!” Zacko shouted even as he sprinted to keep up with the boss. He was the more experienced of the two Wayfarers, and his mind had been churning as fast as his feet. “Just gotta slow this thing down long enough for us to find it. Follow my lead!”


    Without waiting for a reply, the NINEFOLD master leapt forward, extending his legs full-stretch and springing himself ahead of the living castle.


    [Auxiliary Technique: THE EIGHTH DAO—LANCE]


    Follow your lead? How am I supposed to follow that?


    Even as she inwardly grumbled, Serac picked up her pace, burning a big chunk of her Stamina in an effort to match Zacko’s burst of speed. She didn’t have any fancy hiyah moves with which to propel herself, but she could run like her life depended on it.


    Just as she was about to catch up to Zacko, the Manusya spun in place to face Ashvanaga head on. He then lowered his shoulder and tackled the castle, right at the base of its front wall.


    [Auxiliary Technique: THE FIFTH DAO—PAULDRON]


    With a resounding crash of stone versus man, Ashvanaga and its entire structure came to a complete halt, held back by a Manusya and his NINEFOLD-empowered shoulder.


    “Hurry!” Zacko screamed in a strained voice, even as his veins popped and his sallow skin reddened. “Find that fucking weak spot and hit it!”


    It was a good thing, then, that Serac’s mind too had been churning as fast as her Stamina had been draining.


    Ashvanaga the castle proved to be as impenetrable as it looked, but it was also—according to Pathsight, at least—an Instrument and a Steed rolled into one. That meant someone still needed to wield it. Someone needed to hold its reins.


    A pair of glinting eyes yet stared out of a slit upon the castle’s front wall. By now, Serac had a pretty good inkling of to whom those eyes belonged. It followed, then, that she knew exactly where to look for the boss’s ‘weak spot’.


    With Zacko holding the fort (literally), Serac now had the time the aim, lock, and fire. And the second bullet in a fresh cylinder found its mark, right through the slit and between Vetala’s eyes.


    [111!]


    That was equal to REVOLVER’s base AV, unmitigated. A marked improvement over the preceding hits, but nowhere near enough to finish the fight in short order.


    She knew the next thing to try was [Catharsis], this time against Vetala the Ferryman’s Mitigation profile. But she needed to cycle through REVOLVER’s chambers to rearm the spell, and that needed more shooting, and more shooting needed—


    [111!], [111!], !, !, !


    —needed more Stamina, which she didn’t have! Too much running, too much shooting, and too much frenetic reloading had completely messed with Serac’s ability to manage her Stamina.


    With the now empty green bar flashing its warning, she was forced to wait. Precious Ksanas slipped away—Ksanas that weakened a NINEFOLD master’s resolve and emboldened his enemies.


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    “Ugh!”


    Serac looked up in alarm, only to see a reeling and profusely bleeding Zacko, skewered by multiple javelins. Said javelins had been thrown from the battlements above, where several Jailers now poked out their pale heads behind the parapets.


    Serac and Zacko had taken too long to find and exploit the boss’s weak spot. The fight itself had transitioned from a race into a contest of might, one in which the Wayfarers were both outnumbered and outclassed.


    With a thirsty roar of shifting stone and churning metal, the castle resumed its rumbling march. First, Zacko’s stance broke, followed quickly by his entire body as he was run over, becoming only the latest of puny souls to be subsumed into Ashvanaga’s history of bloodshed and domination.


    “N—!” Serac tried to scream in horror, momentarily forgetting about the impermanence of her companion’s death. She herself didn’t even have the time to finish her scream before she too was dragged under the whole weight of a living castle.


    Her last thought before she was ground into Souldust was: wow, this is at least a thousand times worse than the Pulverizer.


    The incorporeal cloud that used to be Serac Edin wafted into the air, momentarily mixing with Ashvanaga’s sandstorm before breaking through to the red sky above. From her new (and fleeting) vantage point, she observed the ‘Ferry’s’ irrepressible march toward its destination, before her attention was drawn to a movement further back in the desert.


    A lone, puny figure—a Rakshasa man, to be exact—was moving at speed, or as fast as his weakened legs could carry him. The man ran from the direction of the dried-up Sanzu River—from Last Sorrow—and he didn’t stop until the sandstorm he’d been chasing faded into the distance, long out of reach.


    And even as the last of Serac’s consciousness dissolved into the Interstitium, she didn’t fail to notice the man’s features, striking and visible even from the sky above. Chief among them was a pair of bleeding onyx horns, chipped and broken from a whole week of head-bashing.


    ***


    The Ferryman had already doubled back and crossed the Canyon by the time Serac and Zacko reconstituted at the Hubstation. They were so informed by a somewhat remorseful Ravi, who also expressed his utmost surprise upon learning that the Infernal Steed hitherto veiled by sandstorms was a living castle rather than some animal that might be amenable to switching allegiance.


    Yet, by then, the Wayfarers had already decided by unspoken agreement that there would be no change to their plans. Whether conquering Vetala-Ashvanaga might lead to solving the Fibrinous Canyon was no longer the foremost concern. A boss had kicked their ass, and now, they couldn’t rest until they returned the favor tenfold.


    Using ‘historical data’ collected by Last Sorrow’s oldest resident, they could forecast the approximate timing of the Ferry’s next arrival. Having just finished a delivery, the Ferryman and his Steed were unlikely to return for at least another month, or perhaps even longer.


    Thus, the first roadblock in Serac’s Wayfaring journey became a veritable hiatus, one spent in the monotony of Fiend-hunting as well as the dour company of sorrowful Penitents. Forget becoming Frenzied; she very well might’ve died of boredom, were it not for her burning desire for a rematch and the corresponding need to level up—and to do so smartly.


    “Permission to speak freely, Wayfarer.”


    “Permission granted.”


    “I’ve taken the liberty to analyze your failed attempt to smite [VETALA Ferryman of the Desolation] and have identified three key areas for improvement. Permission to—”


    “Yes, yes, go ahead… Trippy.”


    “First is Stamina management. The mobile nature of Vetala’s Infernal Steed necessitates a high rate of Stamina expenditure throughout the encounter. My recommendation would be to sufficiently boost your maximum Stamina in preparation for the next attempt, which you can do by—”


    “By leveling Abidance. I know. What are the other two areas?”


    “Second is the choice of attacking strategy. While Vetala and his Steed share the same total HP, the bulk of their combined form is taken up by the Steed and its high Physical and Infernal Mitigation, which, unfortunately, happens to be the only two damage types currently at your disposal. The way you initially approached the fight—mostly by focusing on the Steed—was highly inefficient, but that also means there’s much to be gained from—”


    “From honing in on the ‘weak spot’—Vetala himself. Is that what you were going to say?”


    “… Well, not exactly, no. This actually leads naturally into my third point, which is the role of your Manusya companion.”


    “Zacko? What do you mean? He was doing his thing, right? ‘Drawing aggro’ and creating openings for me to exploit? I mean, that’s how we won our last boss fight against donkey man.”


    “… I don’t disagree, Wayfarer, but as I understand it, your ‘last boss fight’ occurred while Zacarias Borges-Juventus was missing his Instrument.”


    At this, Serac couldn’t help but gasp. Trippy Version 2 was right, of course! In the week she’d spent beating up on easy mobs like the Flesh-fiend, she’d forgotten all about Zacko and his laughing Buddha mask, one that he kept on his person at all times by clipping it to his belt.


    “Come to think of it,” she murmured, “it’s strange that I’ve never seen him actually wear that mask.”


    “Not just strange, Wayfarer. I’d even go so far as to say it’s irresponsible of him. VISAGE is an Erudite Instrument—capable, of course, of dealing Erudite damage. Unless we expect Vetala’s Steed to possess universal Mitigation, we definitely ought to test how it might fare against—”


    “Wayfarer? A word?”


    Just then, Serac’s private conference was interrupted by someone who couldn’t have known about the voice in her head.


    Pazu the head-basher now joined her by the Hubstation’s giant lotus flower, lowering himself into a meditative stance to match hers. Serac half-expected him to bend over and start bashing his head right there and then, but at least on this occasion, the man appeared to have his self-punitive impulses under control.


    That didn’t mean he wasn’t in a sorry state, however. His broken horns were a gruesome and painful sight for any soul to behold, let alone a Rakshasa who wore hers proudly. As much as Serac felt sorry for the man, she couldn’t quite bring herself to enjoy his company, which was why it took her a while to compose her response. In the end, she settled on a curt and minimally polite: “Sure.”


    Pazu bowed his head slightly in a gesture of gratitude. Then his gaunt, embattled features were softened by a sheepish smile as he said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but actually, you’re not the Wayfarer I wished to speak to. It’s just… I’m too ashamed to face him on my own. Do you… happen to know where the Manusya might be?”


    “Zacko?” Serac raised an eyebrow. Whatever she might’ve expected Pazu’s question to be, it certainly wasn’t this. “You’re in luck, because I was just about to go look for him myself. But… can I ask why you want to see him?”


    After the two of you kind of tried to kill each other just the other day? Was left unsaid. And whether or not Pazu managed to read between the lines, his voice took on just a hint of defiance as he replied.


    “I wish to ask Zacarias… whether he might teach me how to fight.”