God's Resolution, active!
Saint's Sacred Heart, active!
Holy Maiden, active!
In a single instant, three effects fired at once: debuff, damage reduction, stat amplification. All layered across Jeanne and the Orc simultaneously.
One side weakened. The other, supercharged.
The balance shattered. Jeanne, who'd been pinned back a heartbeat ago, erupted with force.
The Banner Lance surged upward and hammered the massive club back with raw, undeniable power.
CLANG!
Then her hands became a blur.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
Blood sprayed. Gaping wounds punched through the Orc's enormous body, each one deep enough to scrape bone.
Jeanne stepped back half a pace, widening the gap, and studied the damage with narrowed eyes.
"Incredible vitality. Wounds that severe, and it still hasn't lost combat effectiveness." She tightened her grip on the lance, coiling herself back into a ready stance. "Its defense is absurd, too. Breaking through takes a serious amount of stamina."
"On the bright side, its size makes it slow, and its weapon handling is crude at best. That's something to work with." Violet eyes flashed. Jeanne leveled the Banner Lance and charged again.
"GWOOOOOHH!"
Pain sharpened the beast's fury. Crimson light flared behind those piggish eyes as it squared up against the tiny predator rushing toward it a second time.
"HRRAGH!"
Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.
The club swung in a relentless barrage, each blow driven by nothing but brute, unrefined power raining down on Jeanne like a landslide.
No technique. No finesse. Just raw numbers made beautiful by sheer excess.
Jeanne centered herself and let the Banner Lance sing. Every crushing strike met steel, deflected, absorbed, turned aside. She didn't give a single step, because Leon was right behind her.
But things rarely went smoothly. The Dungeon, it seemed, wasn't about to waste a chance to grind down fresh blood.
Revelation, active!
Jeanne's eyes snapped sideways.
A flicker of movement in her peripheral vision. More shapes lumbering out of the roiling fog. More Orcs, jaws hanging open, ropes of foul drool swinging from their tusks, zeroing in on the "tasty meal" with single-minded intent.
"This just got complicated."
Reinforcements sent Jeanne's workload through the roof. The Banner Lance became a storm of afterimages, crashing against weapon after weapon in an unbroken chain of deafening impacts as she fought to hold a line that was buckling by the second.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
"Hah!"
Skill, willpower, and years of battle-forged technique. Even surrounded by four hulking monsters that outclassed her in raw potential, Jeanne threaded the gaps with surgical calm, and still found the bandwidth to track Leon's fight behind her.
The Holy Maiden's stock was climbing by the second.
Behind her, things were less elegant.
Where Jeanne controlled the battlefield, Leon held his own lane.
Demon Lord's Crest, active!
Scholar's Heart, active!
Arcane Ward, active!
Doubled Magic and Endurance from the cheat-tier Crest. Layered damage reduction from the Ward. Refinement amplifying his equipment and spells through Scholar's Heart.
All those buffs stacked together, and Leon still had to work for every second against the Orc's savage assault. Raw stats and technique, the thing had him beat on both counts.
What the hell is this garbage damage?!
Leon knocked aside a lunge from the second Orc with his staff and ducked under the follow-up. Curses tumbled under his breath, aimed squarely at how little his magic was doing to these things.
One saving grace: the Orc's bloated frame made it clumsy. That same oversized body gave Leon room for maneuvers that would've been impossible against a faster enemy. Rolling, ducking, sliding between its legs...
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
As the fight dragged on, Leon started reading the pattern.
Round body, towering height, zero coordination. All that weight coming down with every swing threw the thing off-balance constantly.
Dodge one attack, and the recovery window opens up. That's the gap.
He clenched his jaw and threw his staff up to block. Every impact rattled through the weapon and into his hands, numbing his grip, turning his arms to jelly.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Steel and wood screamed against each other without pause. And slowly, Leon found the rhythm. He started slipping counterattacks into the gaps between blocks, snatching openings in the split-second pauses when the Orc pulled its weapon back. Hasty, but precise.
The cheating Endurance stat and his broken skill loadout were doing the heavy lifting. Without them, this fight would've been over already.
Then the Orc's pig-face split into a grin.
It surged forward without warning, attack speed jumping a full gear higher, and brought the club screaming down.
What?!
Leon's scalp prickled. Before his body could catch up to what his eyes were seeing, the blur of the club filled his entire field of vision.
"Shit!"
WHAM.
The hit connected. Thinking too much while fighting under pressure had cost him a fraction of a second, and the club swatted him off his feet like a ragdoll.
"Ghhk!"
One arm flew up to shield his face. The impact launched him off his feet, and he hit the ground tumbling, skidding across stone before finally stopping.
The pain that followed felt like cracking bone. The scream came out whether he wanted it to or not.
"Aagh... son of a... ffffuck!"
Jeanne caught the scene in her peripheral vision. Horror flashed across her face.
"Leon!"
He planted one hand on the ground and dragged himself to a knee. Spat. Blood in the saliva.
He barely had time to suck in a breath before the shriek of displaced air bore down on him from above, the club plummeting toward his skull.
BOOM!
Leon threw himself sideways, rolling across the stone, and the killing blow cratered the floor where his head had been.
He scrambled up, dropped to a half-crouch, braced the staff in both hands, aimed square at the Orc's head, and fired.
"Scorch!"
Flame engulfed the pig-face point blank.
Sizzzzz...
Fire erupted across that grotesque skull, the stench of charring flesh hissing into the fog.
"GWOOOOH!"
The surprise counterattack landed clean. Pain shattered the monster's rhythm mid-swing. It thrashed wildly, clawing at its own face, trying to smother the flames tormenting it.
Leon wasn't about to let the opening slip.
Eat this.
He gritted his teeth against the pain, sucked in air, and dumped everything into his magic circuits. Blue light blazed in his eyes, wild and unstable.
"Scorch! Scorch! Scorch! Scorch! Scorch!"
One after another after another. He stopped counting.
Explosions tore through the fog in rapid succession, each blast punching the Orc back another step. Flames reignited before the last ones died, superheated air driving the monster into a stumbling retreat with its hands clamped over its head.
Its weapon hit the ground with a dull thud. Seconds later, the beast was writhing on the floor.
But dumping that much Mind and magical energy in a single burst pushed Leon's body to its limit. His skull throbbed like someone was driving nails into it. His vision doubled.
He planted the staff and hauled himself upright, swaying, one hand pressed against his forehead.
His gaze dragged itself toward Jeanne's battlefield, where she fought one against four in a tightrope act of steel and reflex.
The dying Orc at his feet didn't even register anymore.
Damn it. Pure stat-check monster. Scorch hits like a wet noodle against these things. All that effort, burning through everything I had just to barely put one down, and the reward? A measly single point of Excelia.
The cost-to-reward ratio was a joke. In Leon's calculus, there was zero reason to keep grinding against enemies this unprofitable.
If he wrecked his gear or took a serious injury, the repair bills and healing costs alone would wipe out any gain. Fighting Orcs at his current power level wasn't brave. It was stupid.
Options flickered through his mind in rapid succession. In the end, he listened to his gut.
"Jeanne, we're pulling back."
"Huh?"