The monster crossed the clearing in a flash, closing rapidly with Alric. Hirrus feared that the man would break and run, leading the monster on a brief chase into the forest before getting shredded, but to his credit, Alric made the smarter move, ducking behind a tree.

Despite being the smarter move, it still only bought him a fraction of a second. Despite the giant beast’s size, it was impossibly nimble, and circled around the tree in a flash. It didn’t even hesitate as soon as Alric was back in view. Giant claws extended from the fleshy sheathes in its paw and raked through the space behind the tree. The strike sent a shape flying out from behind the ineffective cover, and Hirrus braced himself for the expected wet thwap noise of Alric’s corpse hitting the ground.

Instead, the body hitting the ground made a deep chunking sound of impact.

Alric was curled up in a fetal position with his face a mask of terror, but he seemed entirely unharmed. Hirrus was confused for a moment until he saw that he wasn’t moving. Only his eyes darted around wildly.

It was the same Arcana he’d used to block the door at the Last of the Strong’s mansion. Hirrus wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but it appeared to turn his body to stone temporarily. He was glad that it had prevented the damage that would have very easily obliterated the man, but it didn’t bode well that the monster had the strength to send his stone form flying, when a score of Last of the Strong’s members had been unable to make him budge enough to open a door.

Hirrus was already directing his Echoes to close with the giant feline, and moved to join them, but Kaitzer seemed unconcerned. The monster crouched with its head behind the tree, as if comically believing that it was behind cover. Its tail lashed for a moment before it lunged again. Six legs scrambling made a sound like rolling thunder before it pounced on Alric’s stone form like a housecat on a half-dead bird. Huge claws raked at his body, causing it to roll to and fro. Despite the claws drawing no blood, it seemed perfectly content to wait out the Arcana rather than even acknowledge the three images of Hirrus charging at it with raised blades.

One of the Echoes reached the monster first, the blade carving against the hide of its flank for just over five hundred damage. The strike didn’t even get far enough through the hide to draw blood. Hirrus didn’t know how long he had before Alric’s Arcana faded, but he was going to have to do better than that if his ally was going to survive beyond the end of it.

The second Echo reached the monster at the same moment as an unexpected column of purple energy ripped out of the ground and back up into the sky. He had been so concerned with Alric’s safety that even his third - now second - echo had forgotten to keep an eye on the rolling clouds. Hirrus was surprised to learn that the stream of energy only did around two thousand damage. It was so flashy that he’d expected it to have a more extreme effect. It was still more than enough to obliterate the Echo, reducing it to a smudge on burnt grass, but if he missed one such blast on his own body, it would be easily survivable.

Hirrus reached Kaitzer right before it swatted the stone Alric across the clearing. His hooked sword caught only air as it launched itself after its plaything. If Hirrus didn’t know any better, he’d have thought it an unpleasant coincidence, but he knew this monster was smarter than a mere beast. It had accurately identified him amidst his Echoes, determined that Alric was a near-helpless snack that it could snap up before dealing with Hirrus, and now it recognized that Alric’s Arcana would have its limitations.

As much as it was playing with Alric like a toy, it was toying with Hirrus as well, trying to frustrate him by snubbing him. Antlers, rat tail, extra legs, and strange build notwithstanding, this beast was a cat to its core. Lightning still ran up and down its forelimbs as its giant claws raked and scraped across Alric’s Arcana-Armored skin.

If the monster was going to keep him beyond arms’ reach, though, Hirrus was going to have to teach it that such a tactic was going to be insufficient. He didn’t know anything about how to train a cat, but he knew that the creature ignoring him was giving him the space he hadn’t yet been given to bring the full arsenal of his Arcana to bear.

Hirrus’ remaining Echo ran past him, charging Kaitzer with a raised blade, as Hirrus went to work readying his onslaught. With his stats being physical-focused, X’ruhn’s Balance was a necessary starting point, since his strongest ranged Arcana were magic-based. As the Arcana took effect, and the swirling glows of blue and red switched places on his left and right side, he was concentrating on his Echo reaching the fight.

His Echo’s small health pool sharply limited his options. He couldn’t put his body in the path of the monster’s attacks - well, he could, but only once. All he could really do was dart up and down the beast’s side, hacking away and hoping to find a spot sensitive enough that the Echo couldn’t be ignored. The illusory hooked blade dealt insignificant damage, but Hirrus hoped the pain could draw the monster’s ire, striking at its tail, its joints, its armpits, even its belly.

He satisfied himself with knowing that while his Echo failed, Hirrus was powering up for something the monster couldn’t ignore. Eyes on Me and Shining Sprocket had very short cast times, and their longer durations made them a powerful starting point. Logarius Shroud was a shorter duration, but the cast speed bonus would let him select a more damaging Arcana despite the longer cast time of most of them. He started to activate Civilization Buster for an opener. It wasn’t as powerful as Z-Cutter or RiesenFeuer, but it had half the cast time, and he suspected his time was nearly up.

Despite sacrificing power for speed, he wasn’t fast enough. Alric let out another yelp as his muscles un-seized and he flailed his limbs, fruitlessly attempting to scramble free of the monster. There was no way he was going to be fast enough to beat the giant paw that was already raised to swat him down. And even Hirrus’ Arcana was just going to blast it for damage, doing nothing to actually stop it.

As if from nowhere, though, a whirlwind kicked up around Kaitzer’s feet. Multicolored spirals of sparkling energy appeared in front of its eyes, and it let out a hissing yowl of surprise. The stunned moment from the beast was just enough. Alric got his feet under him and bolted for the treeline as fast as was physically possible for someone not using an Arcana.

Hirrus directed his attention to the Echo he had standing on the edge of the clearing. At first he had no idea the source of the distracting Arcana. But he saw a scrap of red standing out in the forest behind the monster’s den. Someone was there. Hirrus wanted to direct an Echo out to investigate, but they had already retreated. And he didn’t intend to let their charitable contribution to the fight go to waste to answer a needless question.

He also suspected, from the flash of red cloth and the speed with which they vanished, that he already knew who it was. It seemed their red-masked stalker had motives far beyond Hirrus’ understanding.

He would have to explore that later. For now, a bright blue beam of destructive energy was forming around him, and he directed it at Kaitzer, bathing it and the forest directly behind it in ten thousand damage worth of cleansing light.

The monster’s crackling shriek of pain at the blow meant that he’d successfully reminded it of the threat he represented.

The giant cat was charging him before the beam fully faded, and Hirrus wasted no time, turning to the other ability Archaeotitan had given him. Flames of Civilization caused boiling red energy to fill a ring around him, blasting the beast from below with five thousand more damage, and inflicting a debuff that would weaken it to subsequent magic damage.

The blinding speed of the six-legged feline meant that he couldn’t get another attack out before it was upon him, and so instead he darted back as the monster’s antlers came straight down at him again. This time he knew that the antlers weren’t the real attack, and so he kept moving until the blast of purple electricity followed it. The electrical energy running up and down the monster’s arms redoubled, but Hirrus wasn’t too concerned. He launched an Ioun Flechette at the beast, the purple missile bludgeoning it in the side of the mouth for two thousand more damage before flying back to Hirrus’ side to greatly empower his next Arcana.

The monster lunged with its paws again, and for the first time, both of its forelimbs came up at once before crashing down at him with claws unsheathed. Hirrus had wanted to use Mystic Dexterity to let him blast the beast with something truly devastating, but the claws filling the air with slashes and swipes denied him the time for even that. He needed to turn this suite of buffs into damage before they started to wear off, so he had to depend on something that wouldn’t compromise his mobility.

Instead of darting away, he darted in towards the beast. Hirrus slapped his hand to Kaitzer’s chest, and unleashed one of his stronger Arcana. Slow Toxin dealt its damage over 30 seconds, but had a tremendous multiplier for something with a negligible cast time. At his touch, the purple orb hovering around him slammed into the back of his hand, passing through it and into the monster’s body. As Hirrus watched, it became a pulsating purple glow under the monster’s skin. A blink later, it started to run across the monster’s body, following the circulatory system and leaving behind a trail of smoking, searing flesh.

Kaitzer screamed.

All the damage he’d done so far had added up to less than half of the monster’s hit points, but now that Slow Toxin was active - and significantly empowered - the remaining health was visibly melting away. What was more, the pain sent the monster into a frenzy, and it eschewed further use of its Arcana to lunge directly at Hirrus in a blind rage.

With his stats magic-focused, Hirrus had plenty of short-cooldown Arcana to fling between the flurries of claws. He fell into a reliable pattern, using faster Arcana like Flamesplash, TK Bullets, and Snow Barrage, and amplifying them by casting Ioun Flechette as soon as its brief cooldown was over. After thirty seconds, he took advantage of Slow Toxin’s low cooldown to weave it in after his next Ioun Flechette, denying the rampaging cat the moment of respite it needed to approach the fight intelligently.

It was still a battle of attrition, but it was on Hirrus’ terms now. Occasionally a raking claw would catch him for under three thousand damage, or a bolt from the sky would catch him off-guard for fifteen hundred, but his blows in return were much more devastating. His attacks landed more frequently, inflicting one or two thousand damage, until he had Ioun Flechette ready, and then Flamesplash blasted the beast for almost six thousand. Not to mention Slow Toxin ripping nearly fourteen thousand hit points away every thirty seconds.

The beast was hardy, and it endured Hirrus’ attacks for the entire duration of all of his buffs. But the final cast of Slow Toxin he got out while Xhrun’s Balance and Eyes On Me were active was the last he needed.

Covered in a grisly pattern of burns and bruises, Kaitzer Starden, Primal Death, succumbed to the poison.