Chapter 1741: Stomach Stabbing Revelations- Hurricroak

[Okay, fuck. I will be the first to admit that you’re much tougher than I had anticipated,] I said as I spat out a mouthful of what I think was my own blood. [Fuck, I didn’t even know I could bleed.]

The fight against Dissonance turned out to be much trickier than what I and my costars had anticipated.

Call it a match made in heaven or hell, all of my inyou like, but our abilities were apparently the perfect counter to one another since we were both aligned with the thunder attribute, albeit in very different ways.

The way me and my costars were built was based on the idea of constructive interference.

One of us lands a blow and creates an internal shock wave of [Chaos]; another follows up and makes it even stronger, which is then brought to an explosive finisher by the third guy.

Hypothetically, not that many aether warriors in the world would be able to counter this tactic because not many warriors knew how to counter [Chaos] for one, and more importantly, the ability to know the exact frequency to counter a wave was so specific and niche that one had to train for years or be the one guy in the world with an innate talent for it.

Evidently, we found the one guy.

Every time we landed a blow on Dissonance, the psycho cyborg speaker would release a wave of destructive wave interference that would not only fuck up our entire strategy, but also led to him landing counterattacks against us.

In other words, we were making him bleed with every strike we managed to land, but Dissonance was able to give it back just as hard if not harder.

[Master Hurricroak, this guy is proving way more annoying than we thought,] Rhythm complained to me via our mental link. [What do we do now? Keep fighting? Go and find the others.]

[No need, we can take him,] Blue said with a snort and a light stomp. [He’s bleeding just as bad as us, if not worse. We just need to outlast him.]

[No,] I refuted my apprentice. [We need to find an opening.]

"You’re not the only one discovering that they’re still able to bleed," Dissonance said back as he spat up his own mouthful of blood, blissfully unaware of the conversation I was having with my apprentices. "But I’m going to make sure that you’re bleeding worse than me and feel the fragility of flesh!"

[Like that.]

Dissonance proceeded to take a massive breath as I felt a surge of [Chaos] and aether build up inside of him at the same time.

[Banshee’s Wail!]

The next thing he did was unleash an unholy sounding scream that sounded like the feedback of an amplifier combined with the wail of a man dying from a thousand stabs to the stomach.

Visible rings of sound began to fly towards me and my apprentices, and as the sound travelled, I could see the grass beneath its path begin to wither and decay.

[Didn’t we already establish that a trick like this ain’t gonna work against me?!] I shouted back before taking a breath and prepared to unleash my own shout attack. At the same time, I instructed Rhythm and Blues to flank the fucker after my attack collided with his.

[Thunder Croak!]

A deep breath and an infusion of thunder aether and [Chaos] later, I released a blast of sound that collided with Dissonance’s attack.

This time, understanding that cancelling each other’s attacks with opposing wavelengths was going to lead to nowhere, we both decided to just go for overwhelming force.

It looked like one of those beam clashes from an anime that the Maestro watched back in his old life. But unlike those beam clashes, which normally didn’t have anyone to interfere, I had two allies who were about to cut Dissonance’s recital short.

[Is this a race or a united front?] Rhythm asked her counterpart as she began to charge power into her flipper.

[Not sure! I just know I’m going to aim below this fucker’s belt!] Blues replied as he channeled his power into his hooves.

Despite not being full-on kaijin yet, they were still closest out of all the other apprentice zakos to reaching that level. As such, my little darlings were able to use enhancement abilities that were able to show off elemental expressions.

From Dissonance’s right, Rhythm was about to swing down a pair of flippers that looked more like blades made of ice and snow, while Blues on his left was about to kick him square in the gonads with a hammer made of solid stone.

If I were to be completely honest, this double-sided attack from my apprentices was kind of a double feint on our end.

My [Thunder Croak] was obviously, noticeably, stronger because I wanted Dissonance to focus on blocking it so that my darling apprentices could flank him.

However, if he tried to block them or use a shockwave to knock them away, that was also in our plans.

If he tried to knock away my apprentices, he would then get a full facial of my thundering power.

In other words, this motherfucker was stuck in a catch-22.

And lo and behold, he fell right for it in a way that was even better than I or the others had anticipated.

The moment he tried to release a burst of a [Chaos]-infused sound to blow away Rhythm and Blues, I amped up my own attack and nailed him right in the center of mass.

It didn’t blow him away as I had hoped would happen, but the attack did stunlock the son of a bitch long enough for Rhythm and Blues to come in and deliver a coordinated coup de grace.

The attacks didn’t happen simultaneously, though.

Rhythm struck first, her ice-coated wing smacking Dissonance hard and forcing the Affixed fuck to bend over. Then, Blues followed up by landing a nasty kick directly to Dissonance’s family jewels, sending the guy flying into the air several feet and causing the Affixed warrior to land crashing in the ground back first.

It was a devastatingly powerful combo attack...and it rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.

I liked an easy victory as much as the next frog diva, but this felt...too easy.

Not that it stopped Rhythm and Blues from prematurely celebrating in the form of celebratory high fives.

[Up top!], they said while high-fiving.

[Down low!], they said while tapping feet together.

Unfortunately, that was when tragedy struck.

"Too fucking slow!"

[Fuck!]

Faster than I had anticipated, Dissonance had somehow recovered.

No, not somehow, I saw exactly how he did it.

The Affixed were basically a bunch of aether treasures vaguely shaped around a mortal pilot, and this motherfucker had an aether treasure that apparently gave him the ability to quickly recover at some sort of cost.

I could feel that his aura had diminished slightly after activating the treasure, but he still had enough power in the tank to suddenly charge forward and...zoom right past Rhythm and Blues.

[Oh fuck.]

I had been so focused on trying to get close to protect my apprentices, that I failed to realize that I was the actual target of the attack.

[Discordant Spear!]

Dissonance thrusted an arm forward and a weird bident-like weapon spawned before jamming itself into my abdomen.

I managed to transform that portion of stomach into my harder crab shell form, but a fresh blossom of pain bloomed in my stomach upon contact anyways because the tips of the bident managed to dig itself into my shell.

As the pain blossomed, Dissonance began to monologue in my face like a cheap cartoon villain.

"You know, in exchange for this new improved form, in exchange for these abilities, my fellow Blessed and I lost our original aether formulas and skills. I can no longer summon my [Astra] or [Regalia], at least that was what we originally thought," Dissonance said he tried to jab his bident deeper into my belly. "Her ladyship said that if we were to find kaijin though, and bring them to her, then she should be able to do something that would not only allow us to maintain our new forms but give us back our original abilities on top of that. Now do me a favor, and die already!"

As soon as he finished saying that bit of revealing information, he pushed the bident harder into me, prompting me to try and push back against him even harder as I transformed my arms into their bear form.

Well, that wasn’t all I was doing.

The moment he stabbed into me, I began to channel [Chaos] and aether up and out of my body through my aura.

At this distance, Dissonance was thinking I was probably increasing my power to try and resist his stab attack.

In reality, I was keeping him locked in place for the real attack.

Namely, the localized cloud of lighting forming over his head.

Once it had reached peak saturation of power, I let the pin drop.

[Thunder Crash!]

"What are you—GAH!"

One of the perks of being me?

I am very conductive to lightning.