World Keeper

Chapter 1153: Once a Mimic, Always a Mimic

The necromancer grit his teeth, his skeletal minions rushing at the pale archer. Her fingers released the red arrow, which split into dozens of smaller arrows, each piercing the skulls of the skeletal foes. However, this was not enough to destroy them, as their bodies were still moving even after losing their heads.

“Did you really think that my pets were so weak?” The necromancer laughed coldly, the bottom of his staff tapping the ground. “Shatter their skulls, smash their chests, they will never stop! The dead fear nothing, and feel no pain!”

“Man, does this guy ever shut up?” Lifre asked in a playful tone, flipping over the greatsword of a death knight that slashed at her from the side. “I mean, I’m still able to have a conversation with you guys while doing this. Oh! Someone just sent in a big donation. What’s this going to be~?”

Suddenly, the necromancer’s face twisted in a rage at Lifre’s dismissal, seeing her arrows flash out and shatter the arms of the death knight facing her in melee combat. “This is enough!” He held both hands, focusing. For a moment, his other minions began to stiffen, Lifre jumping back and waiting.

“Oooh, it looks like he’s about to summon a big one. He knows I could totally just shoot him while he’s in his transition phase, right?” She asked, tempted to do just that. However, she thought that it would be more entertaining to see what he was going to do.

Soon, the walls began to shake, the windows cracking under the stress. The floor split open through the room, separating the two of them, and an eerie, red light began to emerge from within. Lifre was practically bouncing with excitement, seeing a massive, bony claw rise up and grab the floor.

“Oh, this is awesome! Definitely add this one to the raffle!” She called out to the moderators as the skeletal head of a dragon rose up. “RedSky, thank you for the skeletal dragon!” She announced, lifting her bow and taking aim as more and more of the dragon’s body emerged.

The size of the dragon was simply too much, its wings spreading to shatter the walls and ceiling by the time it was halfway out of the ground. The necromancer laughed maniacally as the dragon stared down at Lifre. “You fool… the Skeleton Dragon is immune to magical attacks. And, so long as it is summoned, I share this immunity! Your magical arrows are useless now!”

Lifre paused, blinking. “Wait, really?!” She asked, though she didn’t sound afraid, or even disappointed. Instead, she seemed excited to learn that she wouldn’t be able to simply solve this fight by relying on her magic. The reason that she had taken the time and split her focus to talk to the chat was simply because she felt that things had become too easy with her blessing, and she needed to impose small challenges on herself to keep things exciting for both herself and the viewers.

Hearing that her powerful magic was rendered useless, she fired a test arrow at the dragon to confirm that it wasn’t a bluff. Sure enough, the arrow fizzled as soon as it reached the dragon’s skeletal body. With that confirmed, Lifre’s grin turned positively manic, and she set her bow on her back.

Because of the settings for the stream, she wasn’t actually a slime here. Instead, she had a flesh and blood body, no different than that of the nethrak girl that she appeared as. She couldn’t turn her arms into swords, or transform into a treasure chest, or anything like that. Of course, such details sometimes slipped her mind, as that was the reality that she had become used to for centuries at this point.

Still, she took a deep breath, pressing her hands together as if in prayer. The necromancer, seeing this, let out a boisterous laugh. “What, are you praying to the gods? Are you hoping that they will offer you mercy?”

“Hmm? No, I was just thanking you for the meal~.” She said, breaking her stance as fire wrapped around her hands. “How many times will I level up from killing an enhanced skeletal dragon? I’m looking forward to it!”

The necromancer grit his teeth, holding his staff forward. “Devour her soul! I wish to use her to create a new death knight!” He ordered, the dragon opening its jaws to reveal a black ball of energy.

Lifre could feel something tugging at her soul, but she simply smiled. “Sorry, but I’m actually pretty good at playing around with souls.” She said, keeping her spirit firm. “The wind as my blade. The earth as my shield.” She muttered, stones rising up from the ground to form a layer of armor around her, while the flames on her hand extended into long sabers, fueled by the wind.

“What do you expect to do with that?! You already know that we are immune to your pitiful magic!” The necromancer scoffed.

“What magic? I’m not using any mana.” She grinned, leaping into the air, her body launching towards the dragon’s jaw. A green light began to shine around her body as she held her hands out to either side. “World’s End blade.” Lifre said, her body twisting as green lines flew out, following the swing of her flaming blades.

The dragon took the hit to its jaw, forced to close its mouth before its attack was finished. Lifre took advantage of this to land on its snout, her body lowered slightly. The flames on her arms had vanished, replaced by an earthen glow. “Mountain Shattering Palm, embody the weight of the world.”

With her utterance, her right hand seemed to turn to stone, growing larger. When her palm was more than a meter long, she slammed it down on the stunned dragon’s jaw, driving its body into the stone floor with a crash that shook what was left of the castle. The necromancer stumbled, falling to the floor from the shaking ground. When he saw the cracked skull of the skeletal dragon, he was in disbelief. How could a barehanded strike damage the reinforced bones of a dragon?

Lifre’s body fell towards the dragon, her hand returning to normal. “Here’s one that I’ve always wanted to try! Wrath of flames, embodiment of wind, essence of light!” She called out, her arms seeming to dissolve from the elbow down, turning into swirling vortexes of wind.

Within those vortexes, a dense flame erupted, condensing within the wind and seeming to become a solid beam of light. “You can’t be serious… you made plasma blades in you arms?!” The necromancer complained, but Lifre scoffed, landing once again on the dragon’s head as it began to rise up.

“Of course not. I’m an archer!” She said, aiming her arms forward. The beams of light shot out of her arms, firing off into the head of the dragon and piercing a hole through its skull. “I made arrows!”

However, just as with the lesser skeletons, the dragon was not deterred by the scorched holes in its skull. “Hmm… it seems like it’ll need one really big attack to finish it off.” She muttered, her hands returning to normal, though they seemed to be a bit redder than normal.

The dragon let out a furious roar, flying up into the sky. As it did, Lifre remained on its skull, as if her feet had been glued into place. “It’d be great if I could use the Absurdity of Fate here, but this guy is immune to mana. I don’t think my ki is high enough to use any of the bigger shattering hands, too. Or a full-body embodiment, for that matter.” She spoke calmly, even as the dragon tried to throw her off its snout by shaking its head.

“I mean, obviously, I could just shoot the guy’s staff. That’s his focus for this whole thing. He might be immune to magic, but does that extend to the weapon? I don’t think it does, from the mana I could sense. But, that seems really cheap!” She brought her hands up, gripping her own hair in frustration as the dragon roared.

“Shut up!” She shouted, stomping on the dragon’s snout with enough ki to force its mouth closed again. As she did, a thought occurred to her, and she blinked. “Oh! Oh, that could work! Alright, guys! I’m going to finish this by only using mana from now on!” She announced to her viewers, cutting off the ki holding her to the dragon’s snout. Since she couldn’t keep herself in place with mana, this naturally meant that she was finally allowed to fall.

At this point, the dragon had flown several kilometers into the air, and Lifre felt the wind in her hair as she fell. “The dragon and the necromancer are both immune to mana, so what better way to finish this, than to only use mana?! Thankfully, that guy brought me so high into the sky, or this wouldn’t be so easy!”

She let out a laugh at that, her hands reaching out. She made a grabbing motion in the distance, and then flipped over onto her back, her fist clenched. When she was about to hit the ground, her body suddenly slowed, allowing her to land on her feet. Up above, the dragon was charging up another black breath attack.

“Hey, necro-dude!” Lifre called out with a wide grin. “That breath attack is mana, right? Meaning that you’ll be immune to it?”

“Of course. Do you think that I would put myself in danger like that?” The necromancer scoffed, though he did bring his staff under his robe as if to protect it.

“Oh, cool! I just wanted to make sure. So… what do you think I have in my hand here?” She asked, holding up her clenched fist.

“You grabbed at the air. Stop playing your ridiculous games, and accept your fate!” The necromancer said, sneering at Lifre.

Lifre, meanwhile, simply laughed. “Yeah, that’s the thing. Fate can be really absurd. What’s far away can look so small, like a distant pebble. And, with a bit of effort, you can reach out and grab it. Then, if you hold it back up…” She lifted her hand up above her, opening it.

The necromancer’s eyes widened as a black dot suddenly appeared in the night sky above the dragon, rapidly growing larger. “What… is that…”

“Oh, I think they call it the Black Peak.” Lifre said, though this only caused the necromancer to freeze again.

“The mountain!?” He asked, his voice growing louder. He hurriedly pulled his staff back out, wanting to command the dragon to redirect its breath attack towards the mountain crashing down above it.

“Yup! That’s the one!” Lifre confirmed, walking over and stomping on the necromancer’s foot, causing him to cry out in shock. His focus broken, he wasn’t able to send the command in time, and could only watch the dragon being pressed down by the mountain, which was coming closer and closer to them.

“But… you’ll be crushed, too!” He said, but Lifre simply blinked at that.

“Huh? Why would I be crushed?” She tilted her head, pulling out her bow. “I’m going to be long gone by the time it lands.” As she said that, she generated a white arrow, firing it into the distance. As soon as the arrow landed, her body within the castle vanished. She arrived on a distant hill, just in time to see that large mountain crashing into the castle, the peak crumbling under the weight of the impact and causing a large dust cloud to rise in a ring around it.

“Okay, so even if the bone dragon somehow survived… the necromancer totally didn’t! Right?” She asked, tilting her head and looking at the chat. “Hey, why’d everyone stop talking? Oh no, is my chat broken?!” She asked in a panic, only for the chat to resume with a series of expletives, and asking how she managed to do all of that.

“Huh? What do you mean? You know all those techniques came from Olympus, right? Of course, I would have had time to study them. Anyone could pick it up after seeing it done a few times, right?” She asked, rubbing the bridge of her nose proudly. “I’ve been working on combining the different styles for ages! I call it the Lifre Arts!”