Mordecai first checked in with his core to make sure Kazue and Moriko knew everything was alright now, before he carefully got to his feet to get a better feel for where he was still hurt. When he had a good feel for where his injuries were, he finished shifting from his ambassador form into his normal form, and used the process to help focus his healing.

Thalmirush, watching with curiosity, remarked, "Wow, you really did do a job with that avatar. You can fine-tune everything, it looks like. I can't say I've done much there, I'm just better about controlling my size now. Only other form I've got is still just this."

A moment later, she stood in her bipedal form, which at just eight-feet-tall, could be mistaken at first glance for a small giant covered in heavy armor made of rocky scales. A closer examination would show that the scales were her own, and she just used smaller, finer scales for the palms of her hands, much like the gloves of real gauntlets. She didn't bother with hair either, and instead had a helmet of scales closely following the contours of her skull.

Even the skin of her face was covered in a fine mesh of scales.

She radiated an intimidating level of power just from her build and stance, and it was all so very much the woman he had known before. Mordecai grinned up at Thalmirush and said, "Beautiful as ever, Thal."

Not that he was going by direct memory at the moment. Mordecai was getting very good at processing the information his core constantly whispered his way when needed. Going around with so little of his memory available was irritating.

Thalmirush snorted with amusement. "Flatterer. You say that to every woman, and you know that I don't care. But I heard you got two wives? I gotta meet them and hear the story. 'Cause of course, Dersuta didn't bother to think or ask. Only thing I'm sure of is that neither of them is Satsuki, because Dersuta would certainly have recognized that woman."

"Well, let's head back to the campsite, and I can introduce you." Mordecai's plan had been to just run back at a light pace, but there was a snag to that plan. "I forgot what a mess you could make of the place. Let's fly– ack!" Thalmirush had already acted, scooping Mordecai up into a princess carry before she leapt up and manifested her wings.

She laughed at his expression. "Oh, you should see your face. But hey, a girl's gotta make an impression, right? Can't think of a better statement to show off than this."

Mordecai just sighed and chose to not bother protesting. Thalmirush wasn't taking a leisurely pace back to the camp, and talking over the wind would have been difficult at best. She only slowed down when they got close, then swooped under the overhang and smoothly glided over the top of the wall to land at the center of the camp, where she set him down and mussed his hair. "There he is for ya, all safe and sound. Oh, hi all, I'm Thalmirush, I used to be a raid boss for this guy, but now I'm a raid boss for Dersuta."

From there, Mordecai introduced his family and their friends, and after that came story time, to bring Thalmirush up to date in at least broad strokes. But while that was going on, Mordecai had another idea brewing, and when the conversation had died down enough, he said, "Thal, we need to let everyone get back to sleep shortly. But I've had a thought about something you might be able to help with."

"Oh, this is gonna be good. Whatcha got?"

He grinned at her instant enthusiasm. "We were going to do one more day of delving, as we seem to be pushing everyone's limits, and it's going to be inefficient to do more than that. But we could take one more break day before we go further into the territory, only it would be for some training exercises. Everyone has one goal — see if anyone can draw even a single drop of blood from my favorite training dummy."

Thalmirush stared at him for a moment before she started laughing. "That would make me the training dummy? Yeah, that could be fun." She considered the assembled party and nodded. "You guys can use combo attacks too, but stick to one attack at a time. Ya all hit at once, and you won't know whose attack did what. Which won't be much, but if you manage to scuff a scale, you'll want to know. Now you guys get some good sleep, I want to at least be entertained!" Before she left, Thalmirush turned back to Mordecai. "And I'm looking forward to seeing what crazy idea you have planned!"

Yeah, she knew him well.

After the raid boss had left, Fuyuko spoke up first. "Um, is this gonna to be like trying to hit Gil or something?"

Mordecai laughed. "Well, Gil would win if those two were fighting, even now that she's this strong, but for pure defense, Thalmirush has him beat. My biggest piece of advice would be to not bother even trying fire-based attacks. She's been swimming in lava since she was a baby."

He hadn't been able to take her full measure, but Mordecai could tell that she was far more powerful now than she had been as his raid boss. Which only made sense, as Dersuta would have had more than twice as much time to grow than Mordecai had previously had. Also, Thalmirush loved to push herself and make as much of her power her own as possible, so he wouldn't be surprised if she had most of her current strength even outside of Dersuta's territory.

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This started a flurry of conversation as people started coming up with ideas on how to build up for a powerful attack on a target that wasn't moving, but that didn't last long as everyone was still short on sleep. It was cute listening to Kazue's ever sleepier replies to Moriko's questions and suggestions about what spells would combine well with her attacks. It didn't take long for Kazue's replies to wander off into dreamland nonsense, and Moriko had to give up.

The next morning started off slowly as they did not need to get moving, which was exacerbated by some people still being groggy since they'd had trouble getting back to sleep quickly after last night's chaos.

Thalmirush was waiting patiently outside in her armored humanoid form for when everyone would be ready to get started. The warm-up round was, predictably, ice spells, but the dragon didn't even flare her aura as she just shrugged them off. Experiments started from there as the party started testing out combinations, and Thalmirush gave her feedback about what each attack felt like. Well, the ones that she could feel.

Mordecai did not directly participate. Instead, he found a spot far enough away to not interfere but still close enough that he could watch the proceedings, and began his own preparations. He spent the next several hours carefully building a ritual that was going to be spent on a single attack.

There were many spells that created blades or arrows of specific elements, and just as many that created auras around existing weapons. Sometimes these spells were more esoteric in nature and attacked the spirit or the mind despite being in the form of weapons. The most powerful weapon-like spells could disjoint space itself, moving sections of space away from each other and shearing anything caught across that boundary, or simply ripped apart anything they touched into dust and mist.

Mordecai wasn't quite up to the more powerful spells, but he had a lot of other ones he could play with, and the devil general's spear that he'd stolen was a great base to work with. As he built the foundational layers that would temporarily allow him to stack multiple effects into a single strike, he kept an eye on everyone else's attempts to scratch Thalmirush.

Moriko and Paltira were able to coordinate some impressive dual-attacks while both of them were wrapped in layers of magic to enhance their power, but even with their fists striking simultaneously next to each other, their strikes did nothing to their target.

Instead, both of them reacted like most people would when hitting a boulder without restraint, and they needed some healing despite the physical and spiritual reinforcement of their bodies.

Fuyuko tried an interesting tactic, firing her bow with max draw from only ten feet away. She wisely took her stance and aimed, then paused while Derek built a stonewall in front of her as best he could without interfering with her shot, including protecting her face. At that distance, when already in her stance, Fuyuko's aim wasn't going to drift enough for the lack of vision to hamper her.

The shattered arrow sprayed shrapnel, some of which embedded into her armored arm, but Derek's wall caught most of the splinters that would have hit her. That shot had been enhanced by some spells as well, lending her arrow extra speed and weight.

Most weapons did not fare well against Thalmirush's scales, reinforced as they were by her will and spirit, so Dersuta had one of his griffins drop off a large collection of weapons for the group to test with, as they were damaging their own quickly.

Reckless attacks with large buildups that would almost never be useful in real combat were the ones that saw the most success, but they still only managed to scuff or lightly scratch the dragon's armor. It was the same problem that Fuyuko had faced when she trained against Aia, but amplified by the power of an ancient nexus's raid boss.

Of course, there were limits to what will and spirit could do. Sufficient mass and energy could not simply be turned aside by aura alone, though 'sufficient' was a very key word here. What qualified as sufficient scaled with the strength it faced.

As people exhausted their efforts and eventually gave up, they began drifting over to watch Mordecai's work. Derek was especially interested, given the way Mordecai was working with so many elements. Mordecai had needed to switch to his battle form to be able to handle the spear properly, and he had been gathering and stitching together power for hours.

By the time he was done, there was a massive vortex of energy around the spear, ribbons of energy coiling and twisting tightly and extending the spear to several times its real length. Mordecai would have told people to take cover if stone walls and shielding spells weren't already going up.

Thalmirush stood alone now, her eyes wide but with an excited grin as she waited with anticipation.

Mordecai crouched as he drew the last strands of the ritual together and launched himself into the air, giving himself a final boost of magical assistance. The spinning vortex made the spear incredibly unwieldy, but Mordecai did not require finesse here. At the top of his arc, he twisted and turned his jump into a dive, aimed directly at Thalmirush.

She took the impact on crossed arms, pushing her will and power against all of the power Mordecai had gathered. The resulting crash of energy released an explosion that sent Mordecai flying backward, shooting far past his starting point. His new trajectory sent him crashing through several trees on his way to creating a new crater.

Most of the damage he took was from that initial clash of energy — his flesh and bones were strong enough to handle the impact of his landing. Still, that explosion had ripped at his flesh and rippled through his body with enough power to crack most of his bones. He could do nothing but lie there and make himself breathe for a while.

Moriko reached him long before his natural regeneration could do much to restore his wrecked body, and her healing prayer was a soft and soothing balm. By the time Mordecai started to rise, he was surrounded by several other people who helped him get to his feet. Thalmirush took her time walking up slowly, partly because she didn't seem to be able to stop laughing.

"Oh, that was great! You broke three scales! Ah, I think the parts that broke off got flung away, but look, I pulled a fresh one for you to bring back to your nexus. Oh, and I asked Dersuta to gather a bunch of shed scales from my lair for me, I figured you might want to use them to make something by hand. They won't be as strong, being older, discarded scales, but you should be able to do something with them, yeah?"

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