Climb: The Floor 9 Boss - Part 1

The gate lies before them. The Scale Emblem has been clearing some of the undead menace on the 9th floor so far, in an attempt to make progress towards the north. It is hard to know what lies beyond the gate. But the Tower Exit has not been found on their side of it - and the town nearby has been little help in uncovering its secrets.

Gilgamesh spoke of a Lich he once battled on this floor. But he also mentioned that this floor was one of rolling hills, greenery, and beautiful rivers. But what they have found is a floor of devastation. Desertification has taken over, and the town is all that remains on this side of the walls.

Approaching the door, the large raid group spot that the walls are occupied by undead archer, mages, and other long range combatants. The wall is far too high to consider scaling. They will have to rely on Long Range attacks only. At the bottom of the gate however, there is a far different and strange foe for them to deal with. For the gates themselves seems to have arms sticking out of it. Long arms that reach towards anything that gets close to it, including some of the wandering undead. Both of the gates have maws that try to devour anything that gets in range.

The gates have HP, not Integrity.

"Finish them fast, and finish them hard! This gate and the last tower boss is all that stands in the way of us, and the 10th floor. Let's prove the Olympus Alliance and New World Alliance wrong!" A woman calls out amidst the crowd, stepping forward. A black haired woman in a short black dress, wearing some kind of strange red and black butterfly wings on her back. She appears to be some type of Cait Sith.

Schneider has arrived, with the rest of the Scalies, to see about blowing this gate down and knocking it's little pixels all down into the bit bucket. He poses dramatically, as he imagines it, his profile to the wall as he says, in a booming voice, "Time to take out the garbage!" He cups his hands in front of him, gathering his power as he chants. "Brain, Brain dead. Obey your blood oath, come forth from the land of Avalon. Fire of Gehenna, become a fiery blast and burn everything around us!" The power grows, crackling, betwee his hands and he hurls it into the air towards the wall's defensders, intoning deeply, "EXODUS!" The fireball launches upwards, and impacts the wall, leaving a blackened ring of char and some unhappy defenders.

As is usual for Kita, Scale Emblem's resident black mage has taken a position near the flank of the attacking forces. She isn't particularly a strong defensive force, so she depends on the tanks and fighters around her in order to give her time to be able to perform proper DPS and support.

She looks serious, one hand pushing her glasses up on her nose. Her spellbook lies open to a series of powerful magics. "I'll see what I can do about ranged support. Just make sure you try to keep them off me, if you can." The one thing she does not do well with, is up close and personal fighting.

So, as battle begins, Kita starts by summoning up dark tendrils that look to be tainted plants, which start to scale up the length of the wall, seeking out any they can grab on to and stop in place, or hurl downward.

For his part, Sprites has taken up a position that's a bit closer than normal. Also a bit closer than he's strictly comfortable with. Judging by the rather well-polished sword that now hangs from his waist, he's gotten it into his head that he really ought to change up his fighting style.

Persumably what he does next is not part of his fighting style. Hopefully it isn't. After a moment's worth of chewing on his lip and studying the wall in front of him, he draws a coin from his pocket and zips it towards the wall with way more velocity than it has any right to possess. Probably it's been enhanced with magic. That said, it's still a coin. Perhaps his expectations may have been overly enthusiastic. Note to self: 'screw the rules, I've got money' doesn't seem to much work against walls. Even monster walls.

    This floor certainly isn't what good King Gilgamesh said it was... Nevertheless, Amalthea is here, at the head of the Raid group with the rest of the tanks.
    "... The gates have HP."
    That is certainly concerning.
    That is VERY concerning.
    It's the call of a voice draws her attention.
    Amalthea isn't here to prove anyone wrong, though, she's here to go home. So the old paladin rolls her shoulders and pops her neck.
    Before she storms the gate, spamming her taunts as she starts doing her best to lay into it.

Vertina jogs up with the rest of the Scale Emblem, only to skid to a stop and lean back a bit to get enough angle to look at the top of the wall. "That's pretty high. I don't think I can climb it even... but..." She scraps a foot across the ground, quickly gathering up a cluster of rocky rubble and sparks thanks to the desolated environment. She flicks it off her foot, then off the other foot, then bops it with one knee. The elements are molded together as she hacky-sacks it, until it's nice and round. It gets a bump off her horned head for a little extra lift before tumbling towards the ground.

At which she digs one foot in, and pivots on it to swing herself around to get the maximum momentum, and the right angle of her leg to reach such a height...

"Meteor Striker!" Foot connects with the flaming ball of rock at the peak moment of force and angle, which sends it rocketing like it's namesake towards the defenders atop the wall.

    Ugh, more undead. Fighting them in Ninetails hasn't been fun... hopefully this fight will be less of a slog!

    The enemy's gate is... the enemy? "...So it's Demon Wall but it can't actually move forward and crush us? Doesn't that just make it a structure we can plink to death from ranged?" She closes to shorter range, making sure to stay out of reach of those arms, and starts summoning up water and hurling it at the door. Once it's wet, she starts casting: "Strike from the ground with glistenaaagh!" A skeleton archer's arrow hits her right in the shoulder, breaking her concentration on the spell, and as she pulls the arrow out she has to dodge some of the zombies comine for her on the ground, too! "Dammit!"

    The necromancer had been training up here in the past few weeks, the plethora of zombies being a good workout for what he needed. The push had finally come and Setsuna with his bon headed body guard, Skeleton Knight, had joined up with the push. As the knight stands and keeps the zombies from reaching him Setsuna seems to be in the middle of a ritual as he gathers dark energy from the fallen creating a large orb of dark magic above his head. " Ok I think it is ready." He is caustious as if he is uncertain of the stability of the magic but he releases it anyways towards the wall. The damn thing could eat this necromancers giant dark orb of magical energy.

Welp, finally time to get this to go! Prophylaxis stands ready alongside the others, his eyes scanning the terrain for...

Ah there they are. That person, standing there, making a big ol' ruckus. Prophylaxis' eyes narrow, Inspecting them carefully. Some kind of Cait Sith, is it...?

Well. That's just fine. "Conserve your resources if you can," Prophylaxis says as the gate far up ahead distorts and reveals itself to be some kind of awful wall monster. A wall MASTER, perhaps!?

One way or another, it's between them and the lich they're looking for- if the Pooka Queen is in fact that lich. The doctor lifts his staff, a globe of dark energy writhing and squirming around its head. He swings the staff in an arc, a wave of debilitating power sluicing outward and draining the strength of the vast undead army standing in their way. "But don't hesitate to strike a decisive blow if you think you can manage it. Let's break through to Floor 10!"

The climb goes ever onwards as Gwen looks out at what they have to face. Gilgamesh intel was off very off. Was it accurate once? Maybe but something had changed seriously. Gwen will pause look atr the wall mutter something about Demon walls and Gazebos before she charges at it launching into a dazzling air elemental charge melee assault upon the gate.

"I do not like this!"

The first fireball starts off the battle. Erupting across the edge of the walls, a magic shield tries to intercept Schneider's attack. But all it manages to do is to ease the damage a bit from the ranged combattants. A crew of skeleton archers falling almost immediately.

Using that as the starting shot, Yukihime rushes forward with the kind of speed normally afforded to the likes of Yuuki. Her twin blades sing across the battle with visciously well measured strikes. Flashes of blue light showing quick activations of Sword Artes - cutting at accurate angles to take down undead warriors at the front.

The Monster Gate throws its arms forward, which extend, forming more and more 'elbows' and other joints as they grow from the ground, rapidly grabbing towards anyone moving into Melee range, only to get cut down by the butterfly-winged woman the moment they get near her. One of them catches SpritesHero's coin, and then spears it back to him with double the velocity he initially gave it!

By the time she reaches halfway through, Kita's vines manage to climb the largest way up the Wall, grabbing at Skeleton toes and writhing into the bodies of zombie like mages at the top, pulling them down towards the ground. But there are so many of them, it'll take a while for it all to make a proper dent!

The hands come down at Amalthea, grabbing at her shoulders as she taunts them. Bringing her shield up to block some, while others try to pull her around as her taunt takes effect! This allows others to move past her - Vertina going untouched as she needs to get a bit closer for her own move! The rock bursts aflame towards the walls, and detonates a section of stone, erupting it!

The archers above loosen a volley, reaching even as far as their furthest back lines! A whole sea of arrows seeming focused near Mizuki. Only for an orb of darkness to rise up into the air, clearing half of the arrows on its lob towards the wall, Setsuna's attack blasting a sea of monsters that Kita's attack had pulled towards the edge of the wall!

On the ground, a dark sea of magic tears down a group of well armored Skeleton Knights that started to approach - but it fails to reach the undead hounds that jump over their fallen remains of light, rushing past Amalthea and aiming right for Schneider, Vertina and Prophylaxis! Gwen tries to get in there with her melee strikes, lightning rippling past her, but she has a hard time reaching the actual gates with the constant added assault of...

FIREBALLS raining down on the raiding party! The enemy has decided every pest problem can be solved with fire?

When fireballs begin to rain down from the wall, it is simply something that Kita can't do much to avoid. Her shields may stave off a bit of damage, but soon enough, the force of the nearby impacts breaks through, causing a chunk of her health to deminish as she's thrown backwards. Luckily, the mage manages to remain on her feet, even if a bit singed from the experience.

The pain of it shows on her expression, her spellbook shielded from the flame. "If they keep up the damage like this, I won't be able to last long." She quickly flips to one of her custom spells, "Should try to get as much DPS in as I can while I can."

She summons up a sphere of dark energy which seems almost glass-like. It hovers in the air above her palm. Then, with a motion of her hand, it shoots out towards the top of the wall, shattering mid-flight and becoming a wave of shards which spreads out to do damage.

Unfortunately for Prophylaxis, his favorite evasive spell doesn't really help him all that much against gigantic AoE spells. A fireball shatters every single one of Prophylaxis' remaining doubles, who disperse in a flurry of red light, leaving the last one open for the hounds to charge. One gets a great big mouthful of Prophylaxis arm, drawing red damage pixels.

...

He does not look concerned, nor upset, nor at all perturbed. "Die," he commands instead, as the arm inside the hound's mouth begins to blaze with light. The undead hound trembles for a moment as lances of light and heat begin piercing its carcass, before sending it rocketing off into the distance, sailing like a rocket into the shambling horde before erupting in a vast dome of flame!

Fireball, it seems, was his answer to being fireballed.

                      Destruction rains from the heavens!                      

    Mizuki flees, and summons water and rock barriers, but nothing is enough as overlapping fireballs run down, eventually she just runs, hoping to get far enough away to stop getting hit. By the time the volley is done, that's almost half her HP gone in seconds... and now she's too far away for her plan of 'soak the door then freeze it to open cracks in the structure'. Oh well. There's always fighting fire with fire!

    "Right back at ya!" She focuses in on the undead mages on the wall, takes a deep breath, and coughs out a fireball that sails up to the firing line and explodes in a massive conflagration!

    Mizuki takes a second to appreciate her handiwork with a smile on her face and hands on her hips before she starts scrambling for cover from whatever the return attack is going to be.

    Taunting appears to be super effective! The evil gate is all over Amalthea and...
    This thing has one too many elbows.
    Elbows that batter the old paladin about.
    "Argh!"
    It's... It's seriously creepy.
    Amalthea receives one too many BAD TOUCHES from the gate and is caught in a few fireballs as well, her health beginning to drop, but she does not back down, flipping her sword in her hand to grip it by the blade she starts using the blunt end of her sword like a hammer to batter at the gate, snarling.

Schneider acks as he sees the amored Skeleton Knights approaching, and then the undead hounds. "Holy crap!" he shouts, throwing up a magical barrier with all the strength he's got! Safe, for the moment, he looks toward the foes and sees the wall well and truly covered. So he hurls fire. Not quite the big impact of Exodus, but he advances and draws his sword, or fire in the shape of a sword, and shouts, "Damned!" as he strikes at the wall. The flash and firey strikes consume and burn it as he swings with dramatic blows, sword held almost like a hammer as he bashes the wall like a nail. With FIRE.

    With the magical orb released Setsuna is already starting to move. He had played enough FPS games in his time that those who are fighting from long range only get one shot per position else they were giving free shots to their opponent. Giving some hand signs to the knight they begin to move , a shine of dark energy around both as Setsuna sees the fireballs begin to rain down and as he looks back at his location that is now scorched floor , it just is a matter of luck Setsuna didn't hesititate to move. "Ok position 2 set." His eyes begin to glow as he looks at the wall, the magical power of hunter's eye letting him easily pick out the monsers on wall. He lets fly several bolts of magic, something akin to magic missile, but perfectly aimed magic missiles can still be devastating.

Fire fire and more fire? Who are these guys, a bunch of Scale Emblem wannabes?

Vertina however is quick on her feet, zipping around the barrage of fire coming from above.... Unfortunately she's too focused on that to notice the dog-thing that charges in until it blindsides her, careening backwards across the rough ground. Which is a hard landing on this blasted terrain. "Oof!" It snarls over her, and Vertina shoves one of her arms in it's mouth, forcing to to have to bite into the back of her cestus. Which still hurts, but gives her some leverage to push back and keep it from biting into something more vital -- like her neck -- as she pushes back. Then grabs it's neck with her other hand.

"Bad doggy!" With her grip on it's neck she pulls her other arm free, hoists the undead canine off it's feet and leaps forward. "Back to the pound with you!"

And comes down to powerbomb the undead dog into the enemy lines, impacting with enough force to cause a shockwave and rattle anything else near the chokeslam's landing zone.

Given that Robert is in the middle of the pack of Adventurers, rather than a protected location, his spell is invoked at triple-speed, fingers rapidly flickering in the air, mouth forming a nigh-incomprehensible stream of syllables. It's nearly a miracle that the spell goes off properly at all. But go off it does, and Sprites watches with satisfaction as corrosive darkness descends upon that wall from on high, silent save for an ominous hissing sound.

His satisfaction rapidly turns to dismay as the heavens blossom with chrysanthemum-like fireballs. He doesn't particularly expect to avoid them, but he queues up an evasive measure anyway, the dirt beneath his feet smoldering under the skill's heat.

Somewhat ironically, he's not fireballed at all. Instead, it's his own coin that takes him out, smacking him dead-center in the chest and knocking him ass-over-teakettle all the way to the rear lines. He lies there for a moment, staring at the sky in disbelief. And possibly confusion. "-My- throw coin is never that good," he complains to anyone who will listen.

Things had been getting harder with bosses all around almost like the world was more fighting back against them almost. She would be very glad for her new shield as she uses it to protec herself from the monster gate as it assault them and damn that was quite nuts the fireballs keeps raining down on her she keeps pushing on ahead. She will now trigger sonic lunge hopefully the speed boost will let her get into range to actually do some damage this time.

The door-mounted arms keep reaching far across the battlefield. Creepily far. Grabbing combattants, slamming down on them. But the team is doing a fantastic job right now. Kuroyukihime remains in the midst of it all, cutting at the creepy hands coming from all directions, keeping the various members of the team protected. She seems to storm into Melee almost like a solo player, yet each of her strikes seems to free up some pressure in other parts of the battlefield.

A blast of fire burns through the undead numbers, eradicating the bones in one fell swoop, while others keep moving forward. Part of the blast of Prophylaxis' blast hits the door straight on, causing a massive red mark to appear on the door. It's remarkably 'not fire proof' for being a metalic looking door. Part of its face melting a bit as if it were undergoing a stroke.

Black shards rain down above the gate, upon the walls. There's the moans and screetches amidst the shattering of bones as Kita's arcane shards detonate like shotgun fire upon the walls, ridding large zones of enemies. The team quickly starts to realize that the enemies are numerous, but not particularly high level. Which seems to match with Setsuna's findings so far, training on this floor.

With the exception of those skeleton mages! Low HP, sure, but their attacks are devastating. And the gate similarly is putting out a LOT of danger! Mizuki's fire strike takes out another square of them however, diminishing their numbers severely! This saves Amalthea from a fireball that was just being summoned into her direction, allowing her to shatter one of the ugly white arms of the gate, and get into closer range, clearing out undead on her way to give Schneider a clear shot!

Together, Schneider and Amalthea's weapons impact the gate. For such an absolutely enormous gate, its health bar is 'remarkably small', but still significant enough that the raid party is having trouble keeping up the DPS against some of the healer adds. Sparks fly across the gate, carving into the metal, before those hands come down like a cage, trying to entrap Amalthea and Schneider as more Fireballs come down from above!

One of them brings down a massive sphere of fire, only for Setsuna's blasts to rush through it, shattering the spell in a detonation that damages the Gate as well, and shatters the mages above!

A powerbombing from Vertina later, and a shockwave ripples across the ground, shattering further bones, though the zombies are having no problems with any of this! Darkness continues to fall from above with SpritesHero attempting to keep up the DPS, supporting Gwen's attempts to get in close - the sonic Lunge crashing against the Wall before she too attempts to be slapped away by a whole /fan/ of those arms coming in her direction. Followed by... a large black spell starting to form in the sky. It's a phase change, as the wall brings half of its arms up into the sky to hold this slowly growing black orb that leaks enormous globs of acid down upon those below!

As the enormous glob of magic comes down towards Prophylaxis, there's a sudden flash of light above his head. Twin blades activating in a high level sword arte that /cuts/ through the magic that was about to land on him, before the wielder begins to spin her blades at such high speeds, that the rest of the attack is sent towards some of the hounds that were approaching him. There's splatters of red light coming off of Kuroyukihime, but the young woman doesn't even seem to notice them, coming back down from her leap in a slow-falling kind of manner, and rushes right back into battle - only sparing him a momentary smile and a glance, in that kind of way where an idol can give one a smile and spellbind someone who didn't know they were a fan yet.

    Acid rains from the heavens!

    Mizuki summons up stoneskin... but earth armor is weak to acid, that makes sense, right... it eats through her armor and then through her, covering her in splotches of glowing red as her HP drops to a sliver.

    But this... this is what she signed up for, isn't it? She can't run now...

    The cat ninja summons up a waterslide and surfs her way to the gate, once she's close flinging the water over it in a large area and immediately dropping into spellcasting stance! She has to get this off fast:

    Stripawaythegroundwithglisteningblades! FROST DIVER!

    The spell goes off, and Mizuki immediately turns and runs as it does its thing, moving as if a giant mole is under the ground pushing up the earth in its passage but pushing up spikes of ice instead, the spell careening towards the door... and hopefully freezing it and all the water Mizuki just splashed it with! She can only hope that her logic of 'water in small cracks freezing is especially damaging to structures' holds up!

Schneider brings up another magic shield, and not a moment too soon, between death from above and the attacks from the gate, it's putting his legend of immortality to the test. Not that he has one /here/. But in the anime he did, and that's the sort of thing he thinks about. Not that he's exactly living the Dark Schneider life, per se. The huge fireballs and epic fights, sure. The romantic byplay with the childhood friend, not so much. His magic shield protects him, though, keeping him safe for the moment. He watches the strange attack on Prophylaxis, but continues to chant, "Slayer, slayer, dark thunder of Balmor! Bal Volt!" and hurls magical fire at the targets up on the wall. It is such a lot of fire, too. He likes fire.

Spells that utilize darkness are one of the things that Kita actually has at least some sort of chance of dealing with. She is able to throw up a spell which pushes back some of the negative energy, preserving some of her health in the process.

There is something in her expression that shows just how on edge she is, the slight widening of her pupils and the sweat that beads against her brow. A few drops of the acid manage to touch against her hat, sizzling through, but she remains unharmed.

Changing targets for the time being, she focuses on what is up close and personal, the wall in front of her. She weaves her hands together, summoning up a sphere of darkness which she then blasts forward, the spell splitting like a magic missile in order to impact at various places along the wall.

"Keep it up." She whispers to herself, trying to keep herself focused.

Vertina quickly backsteps away from the enemy forces, not wanting to get caught in too many of those remaining enemy units.

Unfortunately those gate monster hands have rediculous reach, and much faster than the horde of undead too. One comes slamming down, palm spread, and hammering Vertina into the ground with the largest ever of bitchslaps. The ground rumbles and dirt plumes upwards in clouds from the fierce blow. The giant hand even grinds a bit against the ground for extra measure before withdrawing again as the dust settles.

And a form is sillouetted in the lingering dirt billows while getting back up. There's an audible groan, but Vertina strides out of the dust, even with the numerous red marks of damage adorning her body. "You dumb hand! Paper may beat Rock..." She flexes her arms and growls, a fiery aura that's not quite the intesity of her ultimate move igniting around her.

"BUT FIRE BURNS PAPER!" Okay, the retort joke is kind of stupid.

The fury of flame embued martial arts Vertina charges into the fray once more with, a blazing barrage of punches and kicks upon anything that gets in her way, is anything but.

SpritesHero takes a moment to admire Kuroyukihime's handiwork as he clambers to his feet. It's rather hard not to, after all, but the distraction lasts little more than a second or two. Prophylaxis gets a sidelong glance, a 'Really?' eloquently encapsulated in that upwards arch of eyebrows as Sprites blurs on past, nimbly sliding between globs of spattering acid.

Once he's in the clear he drops down, stabilizing his posture and muttering a spell under his breath, gaze rapidly flickering over the monster-gate's grasping hands. As soon as his words slide into silence, blackened, barbed vines burst from the ground, stretching towards the gate's arms and attempting to pin them...or at least slow them...enough for the other Adventurers to get their attacks in.

    This time.
    This time Amalthea is ready for the ELBOWS. Notsomuch the hands, but she'll get to that in a moment.
    Laying into the gate with everything she has, her sword comes to life with a holy white glow.
    As soon as those hands come down on her, Amalthea lashes out, slicing fingers off left and right in a flurry of lacerating slashes as she wails on the gate with a furious abandon.

    Setsuna watches the wall perform a much better version of what he did, " Hey , that's mine. I did it first you damn copy cat !" Perhaps Setsuna should have kept his attention on the battle instead of copyright infringement , as for a moment it appears the necromancer gets given one of those glob of acids for his mouth. Fortunately this was just a mirror of a real thing, " Ok you know what you damn thing. I am going to find a can of spray paint and then me and you are going to have a heart to heart." With his taunting and ranting done Setsuna gets his head back in the battle as he raises his dagger into the air and begins to trace a magic circle while chanting. Those who are sensitive to the weather would feel that slight increase of static electricity before lightning begins to rain down upon the wall.

Well, that's certainly a disturbing looking expression on that face-gate. All of the doctorly knowledge in Prophylaxis' head is telling him one thing: that's probably sign of serious brain damage! Or at least, just... You know, suffering from serious face burns. Still, something about the reaction of the boss suggests that it's not quite over.

Not by a long shot.

A shadow falls across him. Prophylaxis looks up with a frown as globes of acid begin falling from the sky. "Oh," he says, "That's not good."

But just then!!

Someone mysterious saves him!?!?

Prophylaxis meets her look with one of his own. It's...

Actually maybe not as stunned and idolizing as expected? Thankful, certainly, but he wouldn't be a veteran of a dozen or more years if he let a single save from the fire sway his heart. If he did, he'd treat Setsuna better.

Instead, Prophylaxis directs his ire toward the gate. It might have entered a new phase, but he's still got several tricks up his sleeve. The sky darkens more than it already is, electricity roiling across the gathering clouds like writhing dragons. "Come, now," Prophylaxis orders, "Shatter the shield of my foes with the hammer of the heavens. Lightning!"

Thunder roars across the sky! A bolt of blinding force courses down from on-high, smashing directly into the monster-gate!

Frost climbs the ground like a shark swimming beneath the water, with naught but its fin sticking out, until the ice suddenly shatters against the door! The ice suddenly splashes out wide and far, taking up far more of its body than that spell might have suggested being capable of, and causing some of its arms to freeze over!

Kuroyukihime uses that opportunity to use those ice arms to run /up/ them towards the walls above, and jumping at some of the mages. Leaving the others to deal with the giant black orb by removing the threat of adds and other DPS sources against them, aided by Schneider as his flames light up the walls and eradicate the arches that had turned in order to shoot her!

Kita shows that she is in fact quite capable of keeping up a high DPS rating! Dragoons take note. Because this black mage is not stepping off of her ley line! The sphere collapses and fires out the multiple blasts, which rain down in a cascade of arcane detonations across the battlefield on their way to the walls, before impacting upon the Gate Monster and chunking its health!

Flaming punches rip apart arms, and punch holes through hands! Vertina is on a roll, protecting SpritesHero from the incoming blow that could have finished him off, before she tears through a few more arms, clearing out a way for the rest to proceed! With SpritesHero assisting the team by pinning the arms further, and preventing it from shielding itself!

There's a sudden splitting light that burns up into the skies! The holy blade of the law coming down upon the Gate Monster at Amalthea's hand, spearing up and tearing off arms and ripping apart and melting its metal, causing the entire door to start becoming red with light!

Electricity follows the blinding light, ripping down from above. Tearing at the gate as well as the undead that guard it! Zap after zap eradicating the monsters above! Only for the electrical discharge to grow as Setsuna and Prophylaxis work together. The lightning ripples like a cross across the skies, rapidly approaching the center - forming a sudden blinding light once more, and this time coming DOWN towards the gate.

There's a zap, only /after/ which the boom of lightning becomes audible, as the wall detonates with lightning and the Gate is destroyed amidst a shattering of light, undead falling from the walls as they crumble!

Gwen gets slapped by the wall he mind reels at how is that working? She's not sure how that works as she gopes flying from the force of the hit. She has the hell beat out of her, but she's still alvie she's going to try to get back into the fight but it looks like they are making progress. She has been hit so hard she's not getting back up as quickly as she normally does. She looks up at the Gate and then tries to scramble out of the way. She scrambles away as she watches the whole thing come down. "Woah..."

Whatever else Robert may be, he's Scale. Even as he straightens, breathing heavily and scuttling backwards away from the wall (most likely to avoid the resulting cloud of dust), he's already invoking a spell. And yes, it's fireball. Because fireball solves everything. And maybe, just maybe, some of those tumbling undead will need toasting. He'll be disappointed if they don't. But he'll understand. Probably.

As the wall begins to fall, there is a feeling of relief that comes over Kita. It's the same as so many times before. She is far more comfortable in an art studio than she is on the front lines of a fight. Her breath comes in short gasps as she tugs her witch's hat down, trying to gather her wits about her.

Closing her spellbook, the witch shakes her head. She'll need some healing before she can face down another battle, and she isn't quick to want to rush forward beyond the wall.

For now, she hangs back, staying with the healers and other support members of Scale Emblem, trying to slow her heartbeat and gather her courage.

    As the door reddens, growing hotter and hotter, Amalthea does not stop. Wielding her sword in deft, deadly, strokes she continues to batter on the gate until the last possible second, as that deluge of lightning pours down on it, forcing her to back off.
    But it worked. The gate is *dead*. The walls begin to crumble.
    Amalthea heaves a sigh.
    It's over, then. For now at least. Later can come the Pooka Queen or whatever else is in store for them as she sheathes her blade.

    Setsuna looks at the wall falling and the chimlink is a buzz and he just sighs. There was a debate going on that he takes a moment to ignore bere he looks at the group. " I need a few volunteers to help scout ahead. Only scouting. We just need some eyes forward before he press on. Only those who are able body. " Setsuna shouts out to the armada. It is one of the few times that he isn't bleeding or missing a leg or something, so best to make use of it before that changes.

    The way forward is cleared! With no danger, Mizuki takes a moment to ID the loot. This was the result of an experiment? Huh. She also lets the Scales know it'll be good for certain projects, then gathers with the others. She waves to Setsuna. "Ninja here. I can scout as soon as I'm healed, if we're in that much of a hurry..."

SpritesHero is rather untouched, aside from that one time he got smacked around by money. Whatever. He'll walk it off. And if he can't, he'll pretend he can, because he is -not- about to let anyone know how much damage was inflicted by a coin. It's like being KO'ed by a cookie. Well, not in a practical sense. But in a dramatic sense.

"I'm fit to go," he decides, and informs Setsuna of such. "You just want eyes on the area around the path and castle, yes?"

    Setsuna looks over at Mizuki and shakes his head. " You misunderstand and thinking I am that dragon on chims. No no , I am more concerned that we just broke the dam and the flood is coming. Thats all." Yes Setsuna is rather concerned that they didn't just break the wall that is keeping them out, but that they broke the wall that is keeping something in. " Exactly Robert, just something so that we know whats coming, if anything. "

Schneider has survived this fight. Which, while not a bossfight, was pretty intense. He looks around to see how others are doing. He also volunteers for scouting. "I can go now, as long as sneaking's not important? Because there's regular scouting that anyone can do, and there's the whole ninja thing, which he's wildly unqualified for.

"Roger that. Cheers." And with that Robert is off, heading in the direction of the crumbled wall and the area beyond leading to the castle. Where he will totally be doing exactly as Setsuna requested, and totally -not- keeping an eye on the newly transferred-in Kuroyukihime to see what in blazes she's up to. Because that would be rude. Very rude. Positively uncivil.

After it's all said and done Vertina finally relents, panting a bit from the expenditure... and remembering she's rather a bit beat up.

"We'll catch up soon enough..." she murmurs, as she finds a spot out of the way of others working to heal folks to sit down and assuming a meditative pose. She can use her own Light ki to restore herself a bit, so the healers can focus on the people needing it more that don't have their own regenerative capabilities.

Well, that certainly went better than expected. Prophylaxis watches as the monster-gate crumbles into so much rubble, wondering how it was that someone managed to infuse a monster into a piece of fortification of all things. Maybe the same, or similar, techniques were used to create Were-Fangs? After all, a were-fang can be described as a monster fused to a human...

Well, he can worry about that later. For now he has some people to patch up before that girl can run off and get herself ambushed by a raid boss or something.