Leor's body ached like it never had before. A steady stream of blood flowed from his nose down onto his lips and teeth as he dodged to the side, angrily swatting away the clawed hand that tried to swipe at his throat.
He was in rough shape. A half dozen bloody fist prints marked the front of his dark red armor, where he had been struck again and again during the fight. However, an equal number of small wounds covered the body of the defiled elf, and each wound had been accompanied with an Antibody Injection.
Leor noticed right away that his new talent adaptation was an incredibly valuable weakening skill. When he sent a bead of Willpower into the right arm of the mutant, the power of the attacks coming from that arm began to slowly weaken. Over the next few minutes, Leor accepted one brutal strike after another as he sent more Willpower injections into all four of his enemy's limbs.
By now, Leor was feeling a strange mixture of numbness and sharp stabbing pain throughout his chest, nonetheless, a bloody grin stretched itself across the young man's lips. He was smiling because he already knew that he'd won the fight. Each Antibody Injection compounded the effects of all the rest, and by now the mutant elf could hardly even walk on its own power.
It stumbled forward towards Leor with bitter rage still present in its glowing red eyes. Leor dodged the weak attack and sent another injection into the elf's forehead. The great thing about this new talent adaptation was that it used such a small amount of Willpower. He could use it dozens of times without running out of juice.
After sending his sixth and final injection into his enemy, he stepped back and watched as the elf began to tremble and seize as if it had lost control of it's body. Leor aimed the tip of his polearm at the elf's left eye, intending to strike through the soft tissue and deliver the killing blow.
Before he could do so, however, the defiled mutant collapsed onto its back and Leor felt a rush of new Willpower filling his chest, as his total capacity grew once again. The fight was over, his Antibody Injection somehow seemed to have completely overcome the defiled Will inside the creature's body.
This was quite a surprising fact, especially because of the small amount of total Willpower he had used to achieve such a thing. If Leor had simply injected all his Will into the elfs mind in a straightforward tug of war, he would have accomplished nothing more than a momentary stun effect. But by slowly injecting his Will in this new way over time, while also fighting an exhausting battle with the elf, he was able to fully defeat the mutant defiled. It seemed he had truly discovered something valuable with this new talent adaptation.
All those thoughts had passed through Leor's mind in a single instant as he turned to check on the rest of his allies. The line of Beast's had slain a great number of defiled mutants, but Bone seemed completely unable to get the upper hand on the mutated Twisted one, and his gigantic body was riddled with gruesome wounds from the monster's claws and teeth. The Twisted one's ability to disappear like a wisp of smoke into the thick black corruption surrounding its body made the monster a terrible opponent for the powerful ape to face. Bone relied entirely on physical might, and that advantage was made useless by the strange ability. The only thing keeping the ape in the fight was his incredibly powerful and durable body. It was no easy task to bring down a Highblood Beast.
Even though many of the mutants had been killed, by now the shadow-like corruption had spread in thick clouds throughout the battlefield, greatly increasing the power of the remaining mutants. Something needed to change if they were going to have any chance of winning this fight, and it needed to change fast.
Before he could consider what to do to help turn the tide, Leor turned toward the last place he had seen Alina. When he looked over he saw a strange and stunning scene. Two of three mutants who had attacked her were lying dead on the floor by her feet, dozens of pinhole wounds from her narrow rapier filling their bodies. The final defiled elf was swinging it's clawed hands at the young woman in a nonstop combo of swipes, desperately attempting to take her life.
But to Leor's amazement, Alina seemed to glide and dance in and out of the flurry of attacks, looking almost calm as she casually pressed her blade into the mutant's body whenever she had the chance. In the short time it took Leor to rush to her side, the defiled elf was already close to death. It left a bloody trail across the floor as it dragged its wounded body towards her, prompting Alina to quickly land the killing blow.
She stood there for a moment catching her breath, her chest pumping rapidly from the nonstop grueling pace of the fight she had just endured. Then, she quickly glanced around herself. A relieved smile filled her face as she discovered that Leor had prevailed in his fight against the remaining mutant, before turning her attention to the ongoing battle.
"We need to do something, if things continue at this rate we are all going to die tonight." Leor said grimly, holding one hand across his aching chest. "This damn mutated black corruption is empowering them somehow. If only we could get rid of it, we would have a fighting chance."
Just as Leor spoke those words, he and Alina both turned to face each other at the same time. His words had sparked the same idea in both of them.
Without speaking a word, the two companions rushed toward the wounded Drelk. The old elf was still lying unconscious on the cold cobblestone floor. Young Rynn was hiding beneath the elder's arm, trembling in fear at the terrible events taking place before her.
Leor dropped to his knees beside Drelk's unconscious form, quickly running his fingers across the old elfs pockets. He didn't have time to comfort the terrified child, so he simply found what he was looking for in silence.
A moment later, he pulled out two high quality spirit crystals from Drelk's robe, handing one to Alina as he rose to his feet.
"I'm not sure if the formation will take effect with the doors still open, but we still have to try." Leor said, before the two of them rushed back toward the entrance.
As they approached the gruesome melee, Leor heard a terrible high pitched yelp sounding from somewhere near the center of the battle. Glancing over, he saw the second Twisted standing atop the body of a young black wolf. The creature was digging its terrible claws through the chest of the young Beast. Leor felt a pang of despair fill him as he watched the young wolf die, the wolf was one of the few Beast that he had personally spent time with.
Clenching his teeth in anger, he continued to rush across the battlefield. He and Alina moved in opposite directions, each heading in a wide circle around the danger as they moved toward opposite doors. Thankfully, with the mutants completely occupied with their current opponents, the two humans were able to move past without much difficulty.
The inky black corruption was especially thick near the doorway, and Leor lost sight of Alina as the two of them were forced to move into the darkness to complete their mission. Leor quickly pulled his Willpower torch from his back and sent a flood of power into it as he moved toward the doorway.
The corruption was so dark that it was difficult to see his own hand in front of his face, even with the Willpower torch in his hands. The light seemed to get sucked away into a dark abyss as soon as it tried to spread.
Nevertheless, Leor soon felt the cold metal door against his fingers. He spread his hands all across the door like a blind man, searching high and low for the familiar crystal shaped hole. But the door was massive, and it was far more difficult than he expected to find the crystals socket without the use of his eyes.
Leor could do nothing but continue his search, he was sure he was moving in the right direction at least, because he had started his search far to the interior side of the doorway. The socket had to be close. He just needs to keep going.
As he took another step to the side, the metal beneath his finger began to tremble as the sound of flesh striking against metal passed into his eardrums. Leor looked to his side in surprise to see the body of a massive Beast right beside him. It was a familiar form, just far more bloody than he had ever remembered seeing it.
The elder grey wolf struggled to rise to it's paws, leaving a trail of blood across the great metal door as it did. Then, a moment later a second massive form appeared out of the darkness, nearly stealing the breath from Leor's lungs as he jolted in shock.
The second Twisted one had followed the elder wolf into the dark corruption to finish the job it started, and the two were standing between Leor and the socket he needed to reach.
"Damn, damn, damn!" he cursed under his breath, glancing between the Beast and the Twisted.
The elder wolf was heavily injured, Leor wasn't going to be able to rely on him to hold the Twisted one off for even a few more seconds as he searched for the socket. Luckily, as he glanced toward the great door with the corner of his eye, he was the family shape of the socket hole sitting just past the elder wolf.
Leor had no time to think, he just did the first thing that came to his mind. Summoning every last drop of his Willpower, Leor rushed forward right between the two embattled foes. Right as he stepped between them, he sent every last drop of his Will into the Willpower torch in his hand.
For just a moment, the abyssal darkness became like a glorious sun. The blazing light realm Willpower shone with such brilliance that the Twisted one was utterly blinded. The mutants' over reliance on darkness, and weakness to sunlight probably played a large role in why Leor's desperate strategy worked against such a power defiled, but it did.
Even as he took the last two steps the great burst of flaming light was already being consumed by the neverending darkness, but Leor didn't care. He had reached his target.
With a soft clink, like metal and glass rubbing together, Leor pressed the high grade spirit crystal into the defensive formation.