Ashtoreth watched the horse screech and burn below her as her elemental darted toward it.

That was the thing about hellfire: it was costly in terms of [Mana], but burns were some of the most difficult injuries to regenerate from, so comprehensively did they destroy flesh.

The Horsemen's horses didn't do sacred damage, either, instead simply functioning as physical battering rams. As such, the red horse below her wouldn't have the power to kill her elemental.

And her fire was burning brighter every second as it ate the horse's stats and converted them to fuel.

Swapping her boon for the riskier bonus to [Magic] had worked out exactly as planned, even if it had cost a huge portion of [Bloodfire].

It was her workaround for War's absurdly high defenses. She needed to make her hellfire more than just a nuisance to him, and so she'd moved her [Bloodfire Boon] from [Defense] to [Magic].

The tradeoff was a rather serious one. If War struck her with anything but a glancing blow or grazing shot from his assault rifle, she might outright die, or at least succumb to the pain of the sacred damage long enough for him to setup a killing blow.

She'd gotten used to being a regeneration tank with more than 9000 [Defense] ever since the end of the first tutorial. In the level 300 scenarios, her rapid regeneration meant that she could shot-for-shot almost anything, including bosses.

She preferred to stay mobile, of course, but it was nice to know that if your opponent ever did score a hit, they'd just find out how hopeless things really were.

Now, however, she was in the opposite situation. She was fragile, partly because of the fact that [Power Tap] had left her with a few seconds of reduced overall stats, but she was also more able to hurt her opponent.

Below her, War looked up at her, then over to his horse. Once again, he had the wisdom to choose the more aggressive option, likely realizing that if he tried to kill the elemental and quell the flames, she'd just put the beast down with a shot or two from her cannon.

And so he left his horse to die, leaping into the air to engage her, conjuring his assault rifle as he rose.

Her flight made her faster. As he opened fire from a closer range, she dodged and wove, cutting and spinning through the air with alarming speed to avoid some of his shots as she moved further and further away from him, his armor inhibiting his ability to fly after her.

As she flew, she conjured a full set of hellfire javelins. She launched them at War just as one of his bullets grazed her thigh and sent a searing wave of pain through her body.

But the pain of his shot was worth it. With great pleasure, she saw War move to one side, changing his trajectory to avoid the javelins.

They were fairly weak, of course. Her scythe and her boon were boosting them by quite a bit, but the debuff from [Power Tap] was hindering them a little, and War's defenses meant that the javelins wouldn't cause him to start burning to death over time.

But he didn't know that. After she'd triggered a hellfire explosion as intense as she had to kill his horse, he had to be careful of everything.

Her javelins sped by him, and she spun her scythe, turning the javelins around and aiming them at War's horse while she continued to fly far away from his range.

A moment later her debuff wore off, and the javelins all collided with the writhing, burning, skinless horse. It was enough to finish the poor beast: War's companion burst into an explosion of Hellfire.

She dove for the pool of flames that burned on the ground where the horse had been.

At the same time, War dove toward her, looking to get closer with his assault rifle when she didn't have her cannon out.

She didn't conjure her cannon, either. Instead, as she hurtled toward the ground, she dismissed her scythe and converted the flames into her greatsword.

She landed hard against the burning stone floor and held her massive sword between her and the horseman as he landed nearby and then fired on her now that she was a closer, unmoving target.

His shots rang against the blade as she hid her profile behind it and filled the air around her with a rushing cloud of hellfire to obscure her exact profile, but he still managed to send a few bullets through her wings, wracking her body with searing pain as the shots tore out fist-sized chunks of flesh where before they had poked holes the width of a fingertip.

It wouldn't matter. As long as she didn't let the pain distract her, she'd been fine; her wings had to be mostly broken before they'd lose their power to focus flight magic.

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In the meantime, she conjured a heart and consumed it, restoring some [Bloodfire] and emblazoning another two hellfire runes on the ground beneath her and commanded her elemental to hide behind her and make itself as small as possible.

She could imagine War seeing all of this and growing suspicious of her resources. After all, she'd obviously spent plenty since the fight had begun. Why hadn't she run out? She was still regenerating, still laying runes, still conjuring minions… everything.

Unless his resources were infinite, he had no reason to believe that he could win a battle of attrition. He couldn't simply empty rounds against her blade and expect things to turn out his way… or at least he couldn't be certain of it.

And so he conjured his sword and charged once more, clearly intending to engage her despite her runes and her hellfire. Melee combat was his best chance of destroying her.

Instead of fighting War with her sword, Ashtoreth planted the blade in the ground and rushed forward, claws bared, using the weapon as little more than an anchor for her [Counterforce Telekinesis], which had also been boosted by her buff to [Magic].

She entered frantic melee combat with War, faster now on account of her stats and the fact that she wasn't lifting her sword. She knew couldn't afford to take even a glancing blow from his greatsword.

Perhaps he thought she was baiting him into taking his armor off. They were still close to the runes she'd emblazoned on the ground, after all.

Besides, with his armor on, there was no way that she could hurt him, not without her own sword. She danced around his blade, getting close and touching him with her claws every now and then, but all she did was stack a few meager [Energy Drain]s on her enemy.

She had her [Hellfire Elemental] hang back by her runes, unwilling to have it engage yet. War would simply shear it in half with his sacred sword, and that would be all.

With his armor on, and wielding his tremendous sword, War struggled to touch her. He only needed one blow, but Ashtoreth rolled, dodged, and wove around him, scraping at his armor again and again, each time using her [Energy Drain] to lower his [Defense].

Then at last she saw several beads of white light seem to begin running across his armor in preset, veiny paths, and she hit him with her [Spellsteal], launching it as a bolt of draining power rather than applying it via touch.

She stole [Purge], the ability that let him clear his debuffs, undercutting it before it could restore his [Defense].

Then she pulled herself back to her greatsword, flipping over it and tearing it free from the ground. War rushed forward after her, maintaining the aggression he'd displayed since the fight had begun, stopping at the edge of her hellfire runes to extend his body and thrust with his greatsword.

Ashtoreth answered his attack in kind.

She knew that he must have known the [Mighty Strike] was coming, but would come harder than it ever had before, thanks to her sudden stat boost. He must have been ready for it somehow; it was probably why he hadn't taken his armor off to fight faster, as he had before.

She used [Power Tap], then used the spell she'd stolen from him to clear the ability's accompanying debuff and [Power Tap] a second time. Then she launched her sword with [Mighty Strike] with the highest set of stats she'd ever had, the blade launching her backward more forcefully than she was able to handle.

She triggered both her nearby hellfire runes and ordered her elemental to attack. The explosion bathed them both in violet light as a wave of heat overtook them.

Perhaps War's armor would have glowed to help him tank the blow, as it had before. She never found out; instead she dismissed the weapon right before it collided with her opponent, converting it into a dense cloud of super-intense hellfire, a bolt of light that streaked forward into War's chestplate just as her elemental rushed in to give him a hug.

The intense heat from the fire of multiple abilities all stacked together, empowering the strength of her spell-eating effect as the bolt of flames that had once been her sword struck his chest.

His chestplate vanished.

Ashtoreth was flying away from him through the air, her double [Power Tap] the only reason that her flight was strong enough to give her a measure of control over herself after the counterforce from her [Mighty Strike] had been strong enough to break the smaller bones in her wings.

She heard War howl in pain.

She conjured her cannon, rotating in the air as she flew backwards so that she landed feet-first against the wall of the arena, her knees buckling and her ankles breaking with the force of her landing.

She brought the barrel of her weapon up to focus on War. His armor was still missing, and he was wreathed in his blood-red flames, burning away the last of her hellfire elemental, once again choosing aggression over playing it safe.

It was just the distraction she needed. He didn't see her muzzle flare, and her shot travelled too fast for him to hear. His gaze snapped over to her only after the armor-piercing round had blown a hole clean through his exposed chest.

To his credit, he kept his balance as the force of the shot pushed him several feet back across the floor, taking a single step back but otherwise remaining upright.

This simply meant he was still an easy target, though. Her second shot tore through his chest, widening the gaping hole, obliterating whatever was left of his heart and lungs. Her third shot took him lower, in the abdomen, blowing out a section of his stomach.

At that point he finally finished conjuring his chestplate again, his armor reappearing and making him seem as if nothing at all was wrong. He took a single step toward her, raising his sword a few inches… and then fell backward and burst into a cloud of red ether.

{You gain [Archangel War Core]; Tier 3}

{Vampiric Archfiend Ashtoreth is the victor}

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