“Keep the pressure!” Kur shouted in the domain chat. “Come on, come on! Rel, get that [Befuddlement] and [Bleeding] up. Jul, the fear. Jaz, keep it blind and deaf! Era, do what you can when it swaps to Leon and it’s far from us.”
Tuk didn’t hear their yeses in the overlapping chaos taking over his mind. Silver Fists’ heavy blows against Tun’s [Immovable Point], one of his newest skills and which formed a great towershield before him, deafened the battle, blocking even the shouting and explosions ranging across the beast's fur.
Tuk’s rings sighed through the air, almost unnoticed, even with their new [Rings of Radiance] aura edge greatly increasing their damage and size. But against the massive beast towering in their midst, he was getting nowhere.
Silver Fists had arrived like a storm.
Dark gray with hints of green, his fur was a thick mess that might as well have been armor. The beast stood at a mind defying 130-foot high when it stretched to deliver its hammering, silver hands joined, tree shattering blows. At that size, one could walk on the creature! In fact, he’d seen Raf riding the beast for an inexplicable moment, hanging on for dear life and looking like a tiny, little thing attached to the beast’s fur.
Like a bug, had been the thought that had come to Tuk’s mind. Like a bug is to us, so are we to him.
Tuk hadn’t seen Raf again, though his display on his domain HUD showed him that the big guy was still alive, his HP dangerously close to the lower end. He just hoped Raf hadn’t fallen down to the waters below, but since Row hadn’t sounded the alarm, hopefully, the axeman was somewhere safe.
“Gad!” Row called, cutting through the chatter. “Your turn. Quick!”
Gad pulled the giant gorilla’s aggro, drawing it back from delivering not a punch, but a kick with one of its massive silver paws. It wasn’t a moment too soon. As the beast turned, Tuk saw Tun stumbling in place as his [Immovable Point] faded to nothing. But the beast roared as he lunged for their branch, and once again Kur called for them to be ready.
“Now! Go! Go! Go!” Kur shouted.
Tuk waited long enough to retrieve his glowing rings, deactivating the [Rings of Brilliance] skill, and Mul tapped hard against his left leg.
“Move it!” the brawler shouted.
“Ouch!” Tuk yelped, leaping away from the brawler’s burning touch and passive AOE. “I was just waiting for my rings!”
“I said move it!” the brawler shouted again, pushing him. “Fuck!”
The gorilla leaped into the air and by all the gods and all the Piles of the B-Nex, Tuk’s heart froze. His neck tilted, eyes widening as he could do nothing but watch that towering darkness of muscle and rage soar through the air in his direction.
Mul’s greater [Reflex] triggered. Even if it burned, he pulled the trugger out of the way just as all the others scattered like leaves before a gale.
K-RASH!
The dungeon tilted and Tuk went tumbling down after the branch’s broken pieces.
“Oof!” he grunted, landing hard against the branch below. Fortunately, he hadn’t gone far.
Shaking his head, he pulled his knees and arms under him, satisfied in the familiarity of all nine rings accounted for and present in his fingers, and a shadow fell upon him.
“TUK! TUK!” Gad shouted, her voice filled with a horror such the likes he had never heard from her. Ever.
He heard the grunt that came before the punch, and then something seared him from the side and he went flying once again, tumbling across the crooked, twisted branch and snapping smaller branches as he went.
The ring tosser could only catch a glimpse of Mul, who pushed him aside with a [Strength] powered hip slam, and raised his fists to spew twin jets of flame in a skill that continued to elude him.
Silver Fists brought its open palm down through the flames, and Tuk’s throat seized as it came down on Mul.
“Nooooooooo!” he shouted.
The monstrous gorilla shook his hands, trying to block out the fire, and thankfully, Tuk found Mul standing, his arms and face a bloody mess. The brawlers’ [Strength], [Constitution] and [Toughness] had saved him, but Silver Fists, enraged at the flames spreading across his fur, brought down his flaming fist to finish off the job…
A glow of gray hexagons snapped into reality at Mul’s side.
Cen!
The trugger searched for the caster, and found her on a branch above them. Her expression was contorted in a grimace of focus and pain and the beast slammed her aura constructs.
She held off the second blow, then third, but on the fourth, Silver Fists shifted direction, and Cen couldn’t react fast enough…
“Stop!” Tuk shouted, and for the first time ever, he triggered his [Dazzling Personality] not for fun or to provide lighting for Jasphaer and Leta before they’d gained their [Dark Vision], but for proper combat. To blind!
Silver Fists groaned in pain and surprise, the first time it had done so since the fight had begun.
Tuk’s skill drowned the entire battlefield, and groans of pain reached his [Hearing].
“Tuk, you’re blinding all of us!” Rel warned.
Oh, shit! Tuk thought and dialed down his brilliance.
Before him, a mountain was coming down, and he could only stare, once again, as death came for him.
The fist collided with the metal shield with a boom like a hundred thunders, and cracks formed around Gad’s feet. Her knees buckled under that silver hand that was even bigger than her.
She roared, pushing her shield back with two hands, rallying all of her [Strength].
“Gad!” Tuk shouted.
The ape pulled back his hand and Gad stumbled, blood running down her arms in rivolutes.
The trugger leaped forward and held the morsvar as she collapsed into his arms.
“Gad!” he called, holding her face with one hand as he came down under her weight. Blood streaked down her broken nose, the shield must have slammed back into her face, and the tank’s eyes looked up to the green and silver canopy above their heads with a distant gaze.
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“Gad’s down!” Tuk shouted into chat.
“I’m on it!” Jasphaer said. “Hold on!”
The gorilla had been taunted away, and Tuk heard the distant talk about Tun’s arm still being patched up, and that Leon was going to have to hold off Silver Fists alone for the moment.
“On the floor!” Jasphaer shouted, as he climbed down from their party’s original branch.
Tuk quickly, but gently, extricated himself from the dazed tank, and laid her on the floor. Jasphaer dropped to his knees at her side, and slammed his aura coated hands into her chest.
“What about Mul?” Tuk shouted, looking over to find Jul taking the broken brawler into her arms.
“He’ll have to wait!” Jasphaer said through gritted teeth. “Our tanks need to stay up, or we’re all dead! Leave her to me! Go back to the fight!”
“O-Okay!” Tuk shouted.
He stumbled to his feet, ready to send his rings flying once more… But the beast had moved over to Leon’s party, and the paladin was taking it on a merry chase, only stopping to trigger his barrier in quick flashes to block those great silver fists whenever the dizzyingly fast beast caught up to him.
This isn’t working, Tuk thought, pressing his fingers against his rings.
This was not his kind of fight.
He excelled at slashing through hordes of enemies, cutting them down in a flurry through a list of patterns he was still struggling to memorize from the file the Master of Thrown Weapons and K had acquired for him. The patterns covered ground, enabling him to avoid obstacles and to set up a short-to-medium range kill zone around himself that he used to cover, at the very least, the heart of the party.
He wasn’t built to fight heavily armored brutes like Silver Fists. He was just tickling the creature. If that!
No, there was only one option open for him now that would help him. That could help him.
The master had identified the weakness in his fighting style, but he had not provided a solution. That, he’d wanted Tuk to figure out on his own way. And as he had been promising everyone else, he had come up with an idea. It’s just that currently, it was incredibly hard to pull off.
He lagged behind Rel’s [Sight] and [Accuracy], which usually didn’t matter since he fought at much shorter ranges than her and could control his rings to much a greater degree, but this new skill he’d been working on required distance. Which made it harder for him to hit the crazy fast beasts of the jungle. His [Will of the Ring Tosser] was phenomenal, of course, but he couldn’t control his rings in the same absolute and effortless way that Cen did her—
Focus, Tuk! And let’s do this! Tuk thought as he spun his rings faster.
Silver Fists pummeled Leon, having cornered him against a nook in between branches. As expected Tun, healed back to working order, taunted the beast next, dragging it away from the paladin’s golden dome before he ran out of aether.
Not the back, Tuk. Remember what they said, he told himself, ignoring the sweat running down his forehead and stinging his eyes. The head or the throat… and eyes best.
He wasn’t confident in his [Accuracy] to get the throat or the eyes, but that beast’s head was huge. Surely he could hit it.
He cycled his aura into the rings, driving them to spin even faster and faster by controlling his aura within each of them, forming an orb of golden and gray light around himself.
Ever since he’d unlocked his affinity, his aura had been changing from the nebulous, fiery gaseous form of shifting gray, into a more solid and stable golden light that beamed through his pathways. It was not the gold of Tun’s mighty shields and vengeance, which was darker and less yellow, and carried with it the weight of old hatreds and spilled blood. Nor was it the light gold of Leon’s aether, of holiness and divine providence, the result of faith and years of devotion to something far superior than himself. Tuk’s gold was a solid yellow, brimming with joy for all that life had to offer. The happiness in the small, meaningful things, the momentous occasions, and the quiet chatter amongst friends during the late hours of the watch.
“There is weight in your light. Substance,” the Master of Thrown Weapons had told him. “The more you focus on the positive, the joy, the love of living, the more solid it will become.”
“So, the happier I am, the stronger I become?” Tuk asked. “Who is happy in a fight?”
“That’s how it works,” the man said, barking a laugh. “So think positive, yeah?”
“Great.”
“But Tuk… be careful you don’t blind yourself.”
“What do you mean?” the trugger asked.
The master shrugged. “That’s for you to figure out. And that’s what living is all about.”
Tuk wasn’t sure what the man had warned him about, but he had tried to focus on the positives, even in battle. In part, it was thanks to that new outlook that he had managed to manifest the aura edge of light around his rings that had become the [Rings of Radiance] skill.
Now, he was going for a similar effect, except that he needed all of that aura to stay put within the rings, without leaks or wastages.
Easier said than done… No! Positive thoughts! Positive thoughts, Tuk! This is going to work. You got this. You trained hard. You practiced. You put in the work… Now, its time to get the reward, Tuk whispered to himself. His eyes were close to popping from their sockets in concentration, zeroing in on the side of the gorilla’s head as it bashed Tun’s golden shields.
He needed to ignore the distractions from Jaz’s jokester arrows and to focus on that blurry head.
Silver Fists was never still, even when aggroed to an immobile tank. The gorilla was always on the move, always shifting, following a rhythm only known to himself and which made it a nightmare for the ranged DPS.
But I’m going to hit you, Tuk thought. No, he decided.
At last, under cover of a huge explosion from Jaz’s blinding and deafening attacks, in a lull between Cen and Cor’s rain of [Aura Projectiles], Tuk tossed his rings.
The little unassuming discs glided through the still, warm air of the Canopy, glimmering in the air as they caught the reflection from everyone else' s skills. Tuk grit his teeth to keep the overbursting, super-fast spinning aura from escaping the metal.
Life is good. The air is warm and gentle. The leaves glow silver and green. The sky is a blanket of purple twilight, he whispered to himself. What’s there not to enjoy?
The rings spun, each tracing their own, separated trajectory, but all coming together to strike as one.
Silver Fists ducked at the last moment, perhaps sensing the danger, or perhaps just as part as his efforts to avoid the ranged DPS, but while the [Will of the Ring Tosser] was not the same as the absolute control that Cen was growing over her aura, nor was it anywhere close to Nar’s insane [Aura Blade] and its strange second will, the passive still lent a hand. And it was enough.
Now.
Tuk let go of his aura.
The rings struck and a blinding flash ruptured through the battle once more, raising cries of surprise.
Light, heat, energy.
Silver Fists howled in agony, but before Tuk could celebrate his success, his mind filled with a chorus of startled shouts.
“Tuk! Was that you?” Kur shouted.
Oh.
“Fucking Pile, dude! Give us a warning next time, will you?” Jaz shouted. “Fuck! I can’t see anything!”
“Sorry! I-I didn’t know if it was going to work!”
As his own sight cleared, his rings returning to his hands in triumph, Tuk finally saw the devastation he had wrought.
“Holy shit,” Calli whispered. And she was not the only one who voiced her shock.
The gorilla roared in pain, holding onto his right cheek.
Tuk caught glimpses of a rough bald patch of vaporized fur, sizzling and cooking flesh swollen and shifting. Gaps appeared in the creature’s cheeks, only to be re-filled with new growths, only to burn and slough away again, and again, as the beast’s monstrous HP fought against the horrendous damage.
“Holy Azzin! Tuk, do it again!” Leon shouted. “Fucking Abyss! Don’t stop!”
Tuk dragged his eyes from the super-heated flesh with bile rising at the back of his throat, and prepared his attack again. But the Lord of the Canopy would not go down so easily as that.
The gorilla roared, his might echoing across the entirety of the Canopy of Giants, and as it beat his chest, his muscles ripened and swole underneath the fur, and the beast grew before Tuk’s wide eyes.
[Might of a Lord].
The beast grew a furious mane of glowing silver and green, his eyes taking on a blaze of emerald. His fur grew even denser, and the silver lining his fists climbed up to his elbows.
The flesh over his cheek healed, and new fur grew to cover the wound as the beast fixed Tuk with a hate-filled gaze.
“Well done, Tuk. You’ve triggered his true form,” Sej said into the dead silent party chat. “The real fight starts now.”
Tuk gulped in the sudden silence that descended upon the battlefield, a gentle breeze cooling off his blistering forehead and scalp.
“Guys. We have a problem,” Eum suddenly said. “We cracked the egg. Mach panicked and triggered the bonding, but it’s not working. We need to take him to the altar before we lose them both! I-I think it’s our only chance!”
Silver Fists roared and leaped before any of them could reply, and Leon just about taunted it before it reduced Tuk to a smear.
Think positive, Tuk, he told himself, as the fighting resumed, the giant beast moving like a blur. Everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be just fine.
Behind him, Jasphaer was still pouring his aura into Gad, and Mul lay crumbled and passed out, blood covering his face and jungle suit.
But Tuk had to remain positive. The party needed him now.
