Bonded Summoner

As the countdown neared its end, the elementals respawned. They immediately started heading towards a few points where it could spawn, and Jake knew he had to make a decision.

“Bree, the Hearth Guardian, and the Garuda can wait here. Let’s go for the buff to keep them from capturing it. I think we can learn more about it by obtaining it for ourselves, besides.”

Jake’s party rushed off. There was one path the enemy could take where they went straight to the peak to capture it, but he strongly doubted they could defeat their guardians before Ophelia could blitz there anyhow. This was even if they took all their elementals straight there.

The buff could spawn in several locations, and Jake’s focus was on camping a choke point and eliminating the enemy. Ira and Fhesiah warned them of the incoming elementals. A few had gone for the peak, rather than going for the buff.

As they reached the location, Ophelia cast a [Sacrificial Barrier] just before nearly a dozen bolts of lightning slammed into her. One elemental had rounded the blind, and all the lightning was focused into it.

Berri’s baseball slammed into it, just as the notification that the buff had spawned appeared.

Berri saw the glimmering buff down the passage. It was like an orb floating in the air, with blue lightning flowing through it. “Oh! It’s over here. I can get it? I want it!”

Jake shrugged, as he leaped out of her basket. The elementals were trying to play peekaboo around the corner, so he added the Einherjar buff to Valora as Fhesiah leaped on her back behind Ophelia.

Like a near bolt of lightning herself, Valora shot down the stairs and around the corner, Ophelia adding to the barrier in front of them. Tanda and Jake both dashed to follow.

The elementals released their condensed lightning once more, but then Fhesiah released a powerful cone of flame from her Torch, and Ophelia lanced through several in a row, as Valora rushed through them.

Tanda rounded the corner next, launching several arrows into the fray, followed by Jake releasing several earthen spears with his spell bubbles.

Jake sent, “Wait to grab that, Berri. It looks like three went to the center and Bree and them took them out easily. All are accounted for.”

Berri sighed, looking strange orb floating. [Aww. I wanted to grab it!]

Jake chuckled. “You can, just wait until they are about to respawn. When you do grab it, make sure you test everything you can.”

[I’ll make sure it’s done, Milord. This one can get…distracted.]

The party returned to the center, without Bloodberri. The lightning was now becoming quite harmful now, and the Garuda had taken a fair amount of damage from two in a row. Jake and Ophelia quickly healed it to full.

“Sorry, my friend. Good job holding down the fort.”

The elementals respawned, and Berri grabbed the buff just moments before as she got ready to head back. Energy flowed through her, empowering everything that she was–much like Jake’s Divine Reinforcement.

[Aww, this is lame. I was hoping it’d make me bigger!]

Berri rushed back to the center, her movements infused with haste. Ophelia was ready to use intervene on her in case the elementals arrived a little fast or went for her.

When she arrived in the center, the elementals arrived near the entrance and immediately released an empowered bolt at her. Her [Armor of Faith] seemed to just reject the attack, enhanced as the buff was.

She smacked a baseball, and it shattered two of them in one blow.

Blood grabbed three of them with her [Telekinesis] at once, ripping and tearing at them as she shoved them, and her body surged for them.

Some vines from Bree and a wind blade from Garuda slayed others, but Jake and the rest just watched and regenerated their mana with mana water as Berri and Blood tore them all apart.

Blood launched a powerful Earth Spear at the end, and Jake guessed it empowered their spells even more than Jake’s Divine Reinforcement.

Fhesiah hummed. “It’s powerful. I don’t think we want to allow them to receive that while defending against this lightning near the peak.”

Ophelia added, “If it somehow multiplies their lightning convergence, it will be pretty dangerous.”

“Jake! You really need to figure out that spell! Zhangzhang said you could!”

Jake groaned at the reminder. Zhang Fhei had made his life harder with his passing mention of it being possible, her incessantly asking about it. “I’m trying. It’s not that easy.”

What looked like blue rippling lightning was buzzing through her body, and even her eyes, as she looked at Jake with a wide smile. “I’ll love you forever if you figure it out!”

Tanda frowned, but with a smile tugging at her lips. “Uh, you love Jake forever already anyway? That’s what the hearth bond is.”

“Yup! But I’ll love him even more. Let’s hurry and smash these guys!”

The buff continued and lasted through yet another spawn and fight of the elementals, Berri cleaning up the enemies just as easily this time. The lightning building up above the peak was already slamming down hard enough to nearly knock people down.

Jake had the party to mostly huddle up to allow Ophelia’s Guardian to tank it by floating with a barrier above.

[Sentinel Spawn in 3 Minutes.]

Jake said, “Let’s let them recapture the peak by leaving one alive to reset the lightning counter–unless they do something different.”

Fhesiah nodded. “It’s certainly the safer way to go. But–ah, well, they did something different.”

Ophelia chuckled. “Of course they did. What’d they do?”

Another lightning bolt slammed into the Guardian blasting the shield off to the side, but then another slammed into Jake in quick succession.

Fhesiah replied, “It looks like they didn’t leave their Gatehouse yet–I can’t really see beyond the shield. I think they are combining.”

Blood sighed. “They are forcing a final confrontation, one that they think has the highest likelihood of victory. We can’t forcibly give up the peak, they have to capture it by moving into it.”

Jake groaned. “And the Sentinel path is protected. They can reach it, and we can’t really stop them.”

More lightning struck, hitting Bree. With her auril and her armor made of vines, Jake thought she might be the best off against the lightning, which was getting more rapid.

Fhesiah hummed. “We win this, and that’s the battle, more or less. We’ll have won if we can make two more respawns after the sentinel, and they aren’t strong enough to defeat us all before some of us have probably respawned, besides.”

She started building her flaming orb, fanning flames from her fan and her Torch into it as she danced. She wanted to be as ready as she could be for the offensive.

Tanda started her [Cyclic Resonance], the golden light building in her chest. She wouldn’t be able to reach the peak before the sentinel, but her power would build just the same.

Jake did his best to find resonance with Ophelia, taking on the Runebound state of the Guardian. It was clear to Jake that taking the powerful blows of the lightning was going to be paramount.

He wished he had elemental barriers worked out, but it appeared those were of the second Tier. He had made sort-of elemental walls like walls of flames, and while water, ice, or wind barriers were decent, a sacrificial barrier was just better.

As the countdown to the Sentinel spawn approached, the lightning was picking up even further. Each attack really took a large portion of their health, requiring immediate healing.

Tanda was building up her vines, and Jake was considering building a dome of ice.

Ophelia’s Guardian was really doing some work, taking a lot of damage for them. It was only when a random bolt of lightning struck someone else, that this was challenging to deal with.

The lightning was difficult to deal with because Jake couldn’t truly get a barrier on who it was going to strike before they were struck–even with his runic bubbles. The lightning was simply too fast for him to react.

Ophelia’s Hearth Guardian couldn’t either, despite being an automaton.

Ira took the challenge, trying to sense the buildup of energy. Following its guidance, Jake instantly tried to cast a runic barrier. The barrier shattered, but the resulting bolt of lightning hitting the Garuda was much less.

Jake lined up several runic barriers in his bubbles, preparing to accept an attack from the elemental and sentinel when they arrived. Their points already totaled 400/1000, so the multipliers were starting to build points much faster.

As the enemies neared, Ophelia activated her [Valkyrie Champion]. She grew to her large size, her shield, and Guardian growing slightly along with her. Ophelia slammed her enlarged halberd into the ground.

“I call upon the god, Guan Yu. Aid me in protecting my allies, and punish their attacks with righteous retribution.”

Her Divine Energy surged, and an apparition of a golden statue of Guan Yu appeared. He was riding the Qilin, but he had dozens of arms spread out behind him like a fan where he sat.

Each arm had several joints, the lengths being meters long each. Many had a polearm or a shield, and the shielded arms gathered around Jake’s party, as if covering them before disappearing.

Each person or entity got a single shield protecting them, except the Hearth Guardian.

Jake felt protected. That if an attack came for him, it would be absorbed by the apparition’s shield instead. It was like a loyal, courageous friend was at his side and ready to help him take on any foe.

Fhesiah’s orb of flames was getting respectable now, and she sent it flying at where the enemy would appear.

Bree charged with her vine shield in front of Jake and Tanda, while Ophelia and Bloodberri charged ahead too. She could no longer ride on Valora being too large, but she dashed alongside her.

It was the Sentinel that appeared first. Looking almost like a giant robot, the metal golem ran in front of the giant lightning elemental.

The massive swirling vortex was visible and looming behind the sentinel from the moment Jake saw the robot. The Sentinel marched with its magical barrier in front of its arm being worn like a shield and a lightning sword in its other hand.

It received Fhesiah’s powerful attack with an explosion, knocking it back slightly. She continued building up more flames, and several foxfires flickered into the air behind her. Tanda fired her bow repeatedly at the Sentinel, trying to cover it with her vines and slow the golem.

The giant lightning elemental blasted a beam of lightning at Bloodberri, but it was absorbed by the apparition of Guan Yu’s shield, which appeared briefly as it was struck.

As the shield was struck, another arm of the apparition slashed into the creature with the polearm, before disappearing once more. The slash did not seem overly powerful, but the creature staggered somewhat from the attack.

Lightning then struck down at Bloodberri from the periodic attacks from the mountaintop, and it was not blocked. It appeared the apparition had a sort of cooldown on a per-person basis.

Bloodberri moaned in pain as they were hit by the powerful lightning, and even slowed their charge as their flesh was scorched. The attack of the lightning of the peak was really picking up, and soon they would need to have barriers at all times or suffer debilitating damage.

Ophelia reached the Sentinel first, her halberd coming down in a powerful overhead chop. It blocked with its shield, and tried to swipe at her with its sword, glimmering with lightning.

She simply shifted and blocked it with her haft filled with auril since it was slowed by Tanda’s vines, just as the giant lightning elemental blasted a shot of lightning at her.

But it was blocked by the apparition’s shield, and countered with a stab of the spear with another arm, piercing into the monster. The Guardian Hearth stabbed at the Sentinel with its spear, bypassing its defenses and piercing lightly into its metallic body.

The Garuda flew past the Sentinel, releasing a powerful Cyclonic Strike. The fierce winds had nearly slammed into the elemental, when it released a powerful shocking attack in an area.

Lightning scattered in a powerful nova, and the Garuda would have been struck, but Guan Yu’s apparition appeared again. The Garuda was shielded from the damage, and the statue countered into the elemental once more with a wicked looking glaive.

Jake hadn’t been idle while his girls swarmed at the boss. Switching the runic prisms on his staff, he prepared his own Tier 2 spell. Being in the state of the Guardian, his buffing spells and barriers were enhanced.

He completed his spell, consuming a large portion of his mana. Runic empowerment beyond their own Tier surged through Bloodberri’s body, from head to tail tip. She rocketed forward, and Jake thought the empowerment might actually compete with the special buff from the encounter.

Her maul slammed into the Sentinel’s shield, her [Maul of Hestia-Echidna] exploding outward. The shield shattered like glass as the golem was knocked off its feet, sailing through the air.

Ophelia shifted in a blaze of light to the lightning elemental, stabbing into it with a flurry of blows, as her allies were about to crowd the Sentinel. It was blocking her attacks with a buildup of electricity, her attacks reducing its buildup.

Fhesiah’s dragon and kitsune flames flashed as they crashed into the lightning elemental, just as Bree rammed into the Sentinel with her tusks.

The tusks pierced through the golem, and vines which were lit aflame wrapped around its arms. Breathing a gout of flame, Bree began to shake the golem off her tusks.

Blood and Berri continued their assault, their maul shifting to more of a pick-type weapon. Swinging the heavy weapon at the downed foe with their immense strength, they pierced deeply into it as their tail began wrapping around their foe.

Its blade couldn’t even move, Tanda and Bree’s vines along with Bloodberri’s powerful tail wrapping around the creature. It began to burn in flames as Bloodberri repeatedly pierced into it with their pick.

Things were looking easy, until Ira raised the alarm. A powerful energy buildup was gathering within the Sentinel, and the giant lightning elemental, at the same time. Jake used [Call Summon] on Bloodberri and Bree, just as the Sentinel exploded.

Ophelia’s Guardian Hearth used a powerful barrier on Ophelia and the Garuda, which took the brunt of the explosion from a distance. The giant elemental then released its powerful blast of lightning.

It pierced through what was left of the Sacrificial Barriers easily, but Valora took the hit for Ophelia, her Guan Yu apparition taking the blow. Despite that, enough of the attack crashed into her, the amount of lightning immense.

She was disbursed in motes of light, as the remains of the attack pierced past her and struck Ophelia.

Ophelia cladded her armor and weapon with mana, as she filled her body with auril. In a flurry of stabs with her halberd, she cut into the living tornado. Each attack disturbed the storms that gave the creature form, and the Garuda joined her furious assault.

The Garuda’s blade was particularly effective, having a special control of the energies that made up the creature. The size of it visibly decreased with each attack, the many flames from Fhesiah and arrows from Tanda striking into it.

Tanda had a golden light swirling around her, drawing up auril from her connection to the Heart of the World, it appeared. Jake had long-since wondered how the auril heroes and various other beastkin would be able to fight away from Highlands, and it appeared this was the answer.

Somehow, they could draw upon it from their homeland itself. Their body would store the vitality, but as their heart beat, and it sang the song of the beastkin, it would mix what it received together with their vitality to create auril energy to be expended.

It was as if by listening to the Heart of the World radio station, they would receive the will of the beastkin and the world itself.

Environmental lightning was about to strike Tanda, and Ira warned Jake just in time. He threw up several of his barriers from the prepared bubbles, the powerful lightning crashing straight through them, before being blocked by the Guan Yu apparition.

Blood and Berri wasted no time in beginning to launch their deathly balls with their weapon morphed into a baseball bat, powerfully sending their spheres into the creature.

It raged and sent out more lightning, but Ophelia’s Guardian Hearth stabbed into the monster repeatedly with its spear, absorbing much of it. After taking a few more blows from their powerful attacks, it was finally defeated.

“Yay! It’s like we won already.”

[Energize Buff Spawns in 3 minutes.]

Jake groaned. “I wouldn’t say that. They may have more tricks up their sleeves, but we just have a little over four minutes before our victory, it looks like?”

Blood nodded. “That combined with the environmental lightning may be devastating. I guess we must just collect it before they do?”

Ophelia added, “It’s worrisome because if they take the peak at all, we may not be able to take it back. The environmental lightning will probably empower it and make it bigger.”

The apparition of Guan Yu took a few more lightning bolts from the environment as they recuperated for several of them, but eventually, it was dispelled. Drinking mana water and mana potions, they all gathered at the center of the peak once more.

Jake prepared his spell bubbles and was ready with his Sacrificial Barrier. Ophelia eventually let her Valkyrie Champion ability go, as it was consuming too much mana during the downtime. Bree wove a shield of vines above them.

The lightning was becoming more powerful with each strike, and even Jake’s barriers could hardly take it. Bree wove a barrier with knots much like the wreath Oran would make. It was a tight fit, but even the Garuda gathered underneath it as Tanda added her rampant growth and various Highlands vines to it.

Lightning continued to crash into it, but the vines were uniquely suited to taking the attack. A large amount of the knotted vines were ripped away by the powerful bolts of lightning, but they quickly regrew with Tanda and Bree’s efforts, sharing the party’s resources.

They eventually decided on Valora and the Guardian to go steal the buff when it spawned–Ophelia resummoning her with a proud whinny. The two were near-immune to the environmental lightning, the greatest challenge was knowing where it could even spawn in the first place.

However, between Ira and Fhesiah, directing the summons was just something they’d have to try. The buff was strong, but it was not enough to risk leaving the peak for with so many of them. Valora left one way with a Sacrificial Barrier covering her, and the Guardian the other.

The buff spawned, and the massive elemental moved faster than it had any business to. But Valora was faster, grabbing it just in the nick of time.

A bolt of lightning from the monster slammed through the prepped barrier, the remaining energy not enough to dispel her. She bolted toward their party, the Guardian eventually arriving to shield her.

Jake found resonance with Fhesiah the Sage, and they all worked together once more to cast their Tier 2 Earthen Spikes spell just as the giant elemental appeared. Lightning pierced directly through their dome above them, shocking Bree significantly.

The earthen spikes were defended against using the nova of lightning once more, as the party rained ranged attacks down on it. Bloodberri was ready with their deathly balls, Fhesiah with her flames of the kitsune and dragon, and Tanda’s Cyclic Resonance had already reached its peak.

Empowered by her flaming technique and Jake’s Heavenly Aura, she released her beam of golden light into the monster with her bow. Piercing through its core, the enemy was finally defeated.

They withstood the lightning for another minute under Bree’s vine shield, Jake and Ophelia adding barriers periodically. After a time, they hit the points required for victory.

[Greater Rift Victory. Winner: Alliance!]

[Party Reward: 50,000 CP Per Party Member, Merit Increase]

They were once again transported to their Gatehouse.

[Challenge Completed. Five minutes to exit.]

Blood hummed. “It looks like we really earned a lot. Between the two Greater Rifts, we can buy some amazing stuff for our Guild.”

“Gnome snowmaker thingy!”

Tanda laughed. “We can just go to Harmony Peaks, Berri! We can have our next snowball fight there, and with all the young ones!”

Jake nodded. “All that’s left is the Raid. We’ll get some rest after this, then we’ll meet with Valtor.”

They prepared for the Greater Rift’s exit. They didn’t predict any ambush, but they couldn’t be too careful.

The portal dropped them in the field, where they were surrounded by their allies. The surroundings all cheered and roared, beastkin shouting out with glee. They had done it.