Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1016: Sinners Synergy

Alexandra stopped its raised foot on a slab of gold. Calypso drove her axe haft beneath the knee, and a second barrier formed against the back of the leg to stop it bending.

”Can you hold it there, Caly?” Alexandra asked through her teeth.

”For you? Of course!”

Kaiden fed fortification through Alexandra’s bond and escalation through Calypso’s, keeping Lust running as he hacked through the tendons of the opposite leg. The boss’s weight lurched toward the limb pinned by the two women.

Calypso levered the trapped knee upward against Alexandra’s barriers, rolling the Sovereign’s chest toward Bastet and exposing the scorched plates.

The felinid’s smile widened. White fire gathered between her palms, bright enough that the Ninth had to turn their faces away.

”Master, this may get warm.”

Bastet blasted the exposed underside with a torrent of solar flame. The outer shell ran down its belly in glowing streams, and the flesh beneath ruptured in the heat.

”GGRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKH!!”

Kaiden felt the blast against his back as he stepped clear of the leg. Alexandra curved a shield around him and Calypso, letting them attack while Bastet burned the armor off above their heads.

Aria’s moonlight lances punched through the softened plates. Alice fired between them, her golden beams boring into the channels leading from the chest to the crown.

”A little higher, little sis!” Aria called. ”I’ll open it for you!”

”I see it!” Alice’s halo flared as her beam followed Aria’s lance through the same wound.

The two lights tore a hole through the base of the vent crown.

”Coming through!” Nyx called, and hurled Luna along the opening they had made.

The Storm Valkyrie dissolved into lightning in midair. Kaiden poured speed down her bond as she struck the breach, and the thunderclap threw water away from the Sovereign in a ring.

Lightning burst from every vent connected to the wound. Stone barrels exploded, scattering burning fragments across the terrace while Luna tore through the crown and reformed on the armored ridge behind it.

”Hahaha! Again, Fatty!”

”After we kill it, bestie.”

”Well, that’s pointless then!”

Violet afterimages crawled across the Ninth’s vision. One fighter’s spear had dipped into the water while he watched the ridge where Luna had reappeared.

”They shot her through it,” he whispered.

”She went through the boss...”

”The others opened it for her.” The captain could see the molten hole in its chest, the crossed light burning inside it.

”How the hell do you fight that?” The spearman faced his captain. ”Who do you even go for? The healer breaks your weapons. The demon catches you. The pink-haired one throws a woman made of lightning at your head!”

The captain had been awed by their power on the climb. Now, watching Alexandra release one barrier only when Calypso had secured her grip, he felt that awe deepen into disbelief.

Every time the Sovereign tried to escape one of them, another was waiting where it fled.

”You’d need a team that can match all of them,” he muttered, gripping his spear tighter. ”We’d be dead before we worked out who we were supposed to be fighting.”

Down at the cordon, Kira had both hands pressed over her mouth. Rika leaned toward the production console, staring at the live feed.

”Please tell me we got all of that.”

”Every feed,” her sister whispered through her fingers. ”We got every feed.”

On the sixth terrace, the boss tried to rear away from Bastet’s fire. Calypso hauled on the trapped leg, Alexandra held her barriers around its knee, and Kaiden drove his greatsword through the tendons behind the other.

The Sovereign crashed down onto its elbows with its ruined face in front of him.

Alice renewed her mark on the organ, visible through the opening her beams had burned.

Kaiden changed to Envy and grasped the marked power. This time the Sovereign’s resistance gave under him, and the pulse guttered out.

The armor beneath Luna began sliding off its back. A plate tipped under her heel, pulling the jagged wreck of a vent down toward her perch.

”Luna, off! The armor’s coming down!”

”Shit!”

She jumped before the vent could crush her. Nyx caught Luna in midair and swung her beyond its reach, then swept the falling slabs over the retaining wall into the empty fifth paddy.

Kaiden kept Envy on the throat while Aria fired past him from behind the front line. Her lance ruptured the violet organ. Its torn halves hung inside the mouth.

Her moonlight had worked through every moment of his cold. Aria was beaming as she lowered her arm, joyous at the proof that she could fight alongside him.

Yesterday she had been terrified that Envy would force her away from his side.

Kaiden released the stance. The mineral feed stayed dead.

”Good shot, my beautiful moon.”

”Thanks~” Aria sang, already forming another lance.

Kaiden returned to Lust, and the family hit the unarmored boss with his warmth behind them.

Nyx set Luna beside Calypso. The gremlin sliced through the unarmored forelimb reaching for the demoness, and Calypso answered by hacking through the one coming from the opposite side.

The last hook lunged between them at Kaiden. Alexandra sealed its point inside a shield, stopping it in front of his face while he severed the arm behind it.

”Darling, your turn.”

Calypso kicked the severed limb aside as Bastet’s fire struck the Sovereign’s chest again. It tried to retreat toward the gate, but its butchered front legs folded beneath it, lowering the ruined crown.

Kaiden switched from Lust to Pride. He built a rising staircase of glyphs from his position at the monster’s face to the exposed skull above it.

”Lexi?”

”I have you, Kai.”

Alexandra’s gold wrapped around him as he ran up the steps. On the last glyph, he launched himself over the Sovereign and chose Wrath.

The staircase vanished behind his heels. Heat raced along his greatsword as he swung it down into the skull.

The detonation split the crown to its roots. Shattered vents shot across the terrace, and Alexandra spread a screen behind Calypso to catch the pieces flying toward the family.

”He’s on its head!” a fighter yelled through the thunder.

Kaiden landed in the wound with his boots buried in pulsing flesh. Beneath him, the Sovereign dragged its ruined body toward the gate, all three mouths working through the blood flooding them.

”GGGRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!”

He dissolved the greatsword back into his gauntlet before plunging his fist into the torn tissue. Then he chose Gluttony and drank.

Mana rushed into him, easing the ache Envy had left behind. The monster convulsed beneath him as he drank, and his gauntlet drew in the spilling blood.

Kaiden braced his boots against opposite sides of the wound. He stood inside the split crown, with the broken skull rising on either side of him and the creature’s exposed brain beneath his feet.

He drew blood from the wound through his gauntlet and hardened it into two hooked bars, one in each hand. Their barbs curved outward, sinking into the inner walls of the skull.

”Holy shit...” Luna breathed from the terrace.

Kaiden chose Wrath and pulled the handles apart.