Kiba stabs forward, Air Jet rushing him out of the path of the sludge blast. There was a very high chance that getting hit even once would mean his death, thanks to the fact that he hadn’t stocked up on antidotes before the Demon King had stolen his inventory. No consumables meant he was having to dodge every attack, since he wasn’t exactly going to be able to heal in the middle of the fight. Sludge was a run ender, to be sure, but the other attacks were grenades and giant hammer. It would be nice if he could just deal with one of these minibosses at a time, but no, apparently he had to fight all three of them at the same time the moment they were introduced.

Any time he had an opening for an attack, he couldn’t take it because there was always another projectile to dodge. Air Jet had a movement component to it, which was why he was spamming it constantly. The card had a five second cooldown though, so he needed multiple copies in his hand to make sure he could keep up with the multiple attacks coming toward him constantly. Four copies, one dodge every second and a quarter, and he could shuffle the remaining card until he drew something useful. At the very least he should have removed the Space Cutters from the active deck before moving away from the warehouse!

He had way too many copies of Air Mana. At least they had a low cooldown, and every time he drew one he could just blast some projectile out of the way while using Air Jet to dodge the giant hammer without burning two cards to chain dodge with Air Jet alone. Drawing another card didn’t take too long, but drawing a good card definitely did.

Pierce, Slam, Slash, all the basic cards had very nice cooldown statistics, but their power was not worth keeping them in his hand. They were great for combination attacks, not so much for individual blows. He’d also gotten a few of the status cards, and even had a few stick, but the wood cultivator had the ability to remove the afflictions at a faster rate than he could drop them onto the other cultivators, and he hadn’t managed to get one to trigger on him. Poison had even made him faster for a while. It didn’t help that he had a layer of armor underneath his robes that kept anything other than Air Jet or regular Pierce from doing damage.

At one point, he’d drawn Detect Ability, which let him know that the grenade guy used ‘the element of metal’ to ‘contain an ever growing flame’ until the flames breached their container and erupted with shrapnel in all directions. That card had a five minute cooldown though, so he dumped it immediately after using it, and drew twelve consecutive Air Mana. Now, he draws one of the most useful cards he has, Reflect.

Batting back a grenade at the metal and fire cultivator, Kiba barely dodges a simultaneous sludge bomb as the wood cultivator completely ignores the splash effect to smash his face in. Dual activinging Air Jet, he angles upward, and then fires himself back down at the ground to keep as much of his maneuverability as possible. Reflect has the same cooldown as Air Jet, and potentially the ability to do damage as well. Technically an actual attack would also have the potential to do damage, but he was highly focused on the fact that he was outnumbered, outpowered, and incredibly fragile. One mistimed dodge was all it would take to bring his entire existence to a premature end. The fire cultivator, on the other hand, easily catches the reflected orb and tosses it back toward Kiba.

Activating another of his Air Jets, the duelist speeds to behind the wood cultivator. If this were not a three versus one match, that would be all the opportunity he needed to unleash a full combo on his opponent’s back while his defenses were down. As it was, he couldn’t afford to use another Air Jet so soon. With four cards on cooldown, activating the fifth would leave him entirely vulnerable to a hit from the sludge, and that was almost certainly a one way ticket to a shallow grave. Well, a shallows grave.

Now that he thought about it, Reflect was about as effective for dodging projectiles as Air Jet. He could probably afford to cycle one of them instead of Reflect, and possibly draw something that would allow him to strike back when combined with one of those two cards. Pierce, no. Air Mana, no. Good to use the one time before discarding though. Befuddling Cloud, no. Peek, no. Space Cutter again, definitely not. If he could use it maybe, but since it wouldn’t let him, no. Air Blast… Maybe.

With the next sludge blast, Kiba combos Reflect into Air Blast, negating the momentum of the incoming poison projectile and redirecting it with an infused slam into the melee attacker constantly chasing him down. The purple liquid splatters over the wood cultivator’s torso and sizzles, igniting Kiba’s hopes, until vines snake down onto the viscous ooze and start growing thicker.

“You haven’t paid attention to elemental interaction either I suppose. Not that I would expect one of the Demons to have any sort of intelligence,” taunts the wood cultivator, “Wood parts earth, and feeds on water. Your efforts are meaningless. Surrender, and you will not be harmed until we leave and allow you to report the destruction of this town to your masters.”

Almost as irritating as the Demon King. No, never mind. The Demon King set the town on fire in the first place, stole his inventory, led him into a trap, kidnapped a child, has much more villainous dialog, and can definitely take him on in a one versus one fair fight when he isn’t crippled for no reason other than because the plot doesn’t want him to die too easily. That’s a villain worth talking about. If only he’d picked up those cards in the starting area to be able to take care of him during the first battle! This whole storyline could have been avoided if he’d powered up before going straight into the main plot. He still hadn’t gotten a Blind card, and from the Sleep he’d gotten from the sidequest reward, he had to assume that it was locked behind a quest until he got to a much higher level zone, with a shop that actually had the rare cards. Until he got there, his only real chance was to shell out for the Booster Packs and hope that he got something good. It had paid off last time, but he still hadn’t even drawn Amplify!

Not that he was willing to try and speed through the deck for it at this point anyway. He had three dodges per five seconds, and a combo that redirected attacks toward his enemies, which was pretty much the best he could hope for in this fight. No way was he gambling away another one of his dodges.

Next time the fire cultivator launched a grenade at him, Kiba Reflect and Air Blast’d the explosive sphere into the wood cultivator. Now that had an effect, the metal smashing into the man’s chest like there was no wooden armor there at all, and setting him ablaze when the sphere explodes. That staggers the melee guy for a moment, so Kiba can Air Blast out of the way of the next sludge, closing with the poison cultivator. Both of his other Air Blast come off cooldown simultaneously, so he risks using one of them to stab into the man’s shoulder.

Reacting instantly, the poison cultivator slams down with his other arm onto the hilt of Kiba’s blade, knocking the rapier out of his hand. With a headbutt, the large man knocks the duelist back, before pulling the sword out of himself.

“Black slime, trying to poison me? Might as well take this as a prize for the audacity. This stuff ain’t strong, but it is new. Never hurts to add something more virulent into my mix.”

Another grenade flies toward Kiba, and he chains Reflect and Air Blast without a sword, burning his hand as he bats the glowing orb toward the man holding on to his weapon. A blast of poison coats the incoming projectile, and it cools to a dull silver instead of the glowing white that had been going toward the large person originally. The man catches the object in the weaponless hand, steam rising from the grenade as the man sneers at Kiba.

“I’m invincible, scrub. I can take anything you throw at me, and that includes your weapon.”

Not being able to cause damage without a rapier to actually hit with wasn’t as much of a problem as it usually was, since Kiba wasn’t able to hit anything even when he did have the blade in hand. Redirecting attacks into the other enemies seemed to be the ideal strategy, and now that he’d gotten one success and two failures it was fairly clear that it was set up in such a way that only one type of attack would affect each person.

For the fire cultivator, he’d have to send poison at him. For the poison cultivator, he’d have to somehow get the wood cultivator to use attacks on that guy. That was probably going to take more effort, and since the Reflect and Air Blast combination was much better for redirecting projectile attacks than melee attacks, his best strategy was probably to use some sort of confusing attack to reduce accuracy, and interpose himself between the two before dodging out of the way. He’d just discarded Befuddling Cloud, that was unfortunate.

He could work on that after he’d put some damage on the other two. Another grenade was incoming, so he Air Jet’s his way out of the path of the incoming wood cultivator, and by complete coincidence the projectile smashes into the man’s side. That was two hits down, and without him having to use two cards. If he hadn’t come across the redirection combination, that was probably how he was supposed to fight this battle in the first place. Definitely a tutorial on how elemental affinities worked, as long as he kept not getting hit they’d eventually hit each other, and depending on whether they took damage or just boasted about how they couldn’t take damage from an element they resisted he was expected to figure out which attack he wanted to lead each of them into.

That was a long, drawn out method of completing a confrontation though. Speed run strategies would definitely have him using reflection combinations to make sure every attack hit the correct target and as little time as possible was spent standing around just waiting for the correct elemental attack to be directed at the correct area. Presumably he could stand near any one of the three, and the elemental attacks would naturally hit that person eventually, but the wood cultivator not being projectile based made that proposition a little bit tricky. Well, there had to be something to make this fight the tiniest bit difficult once you know what you’re doing. If he focuses on redirecting fire onto the melee unit, Kiba should have a much easier time finishing off the other two.

With the next use of the Reflect and Air Blast cards, Kiba burns his hand again redirecting the burning metal into the wood cultivator, but it pays off when the man stops chasing him and kneels down. With one down, he could focus on getting his sword back, which would be much better for redirecting poisonous sludge than an air infused bare handed strike. If he could tell where the next one of those attacks was coming from, that would also be nice, since it had been a few seconds…

Sludge comes down, but not toward Kiba as he was expecting. Instead, it lands on the wood cultivator, who stands back up as the vines around him writhe and grow off of the poisonous gunk.

“Thank you, Wang Yun. Yang Ming, be more cautious in the application of your firepower please,” the melee fighter says, rejuvenating all the damage Kiba had managed to trick onto him.

“Just don’t stand in fire,” the fire cultivator, Yang Ming, retorts.

That was an unexpected wrinkle. He was probably going to need to take them all out in a specific order then. Alternatively, Kiba might be forced to defeat all three at the same time. He really hoped that wasn’t the case. The longer any given fight dragged on, the more likely it was he’d make a mistake and get clipped by one of these attacks, any of which he was sure would take him down instantly.

Maybe a direct Air Blast would work for redirecting the wood cultivator into the toxic Wang Yun. Kiba runs toward Wang Yun, acting like he was intending to attack in some way. The muscular cultivator barely reacts, more interested in showing off the fact that he had stolen the duelist’s sword than doing anything to arrest Kiba’s momentum, rightly disparaging his physical capabilities. That wasn’t the point though. The point was the the wood cultivator would be coming up to attack with his hammer…

Now.

Double playing Air Jet, Kiba shoots up and down to directly behind the oncoming melee attacker, and uses his Air Blast on the man’s back. It wouldn’t do any damage, but it was enough to impart just enough force to send the man’s attack further forward, and into the Wang Yun that was now directly in front of him.

Kiba had felt the power of that hit before, and the fact it does basically nothing to Wang Yun other than make him drop the rapier is a stark testament to how underpowered he is for this entire scenario. Kiba dashes in to grab the sword, then using his last Air Jet for the next few seconds makes as much distance from the two cultivators as he can. That puts him next to a wall of sailors.

He had tested them before, and any attempt to Air Jet out of the confining ring he was trapped in would just result in about seven of them jumping up and punching him back into the center of the arena. It only took one of them to hit him that far, but redundancy was probably an important consideration when dealing with someone who could change directions while still in the middle of a jump. At least it wasn’t just an invisible wall keeping him from leaving the area. He had a few of those sprung on him during interactions in the faction base. Those required a solid surface to work with from what he could tell though, so this pile of sailors method was probably the only viable solution when the area couldn’t be prepared in advance, or it was on a shifting dock or the like. Theoretically, that meant that if he ever had a sky or volcano based arena, he would have a full run on the entire battlefield. It wasn’t as though anyone could maintain an array on a liquid surface, or even worse an intangible one.

Maybe Space Cutter would have a use later on, once he figured out how to make it work. If the barriers counted as a separated space, he might be able to cut it open and escape battles that originally seem like mandatory encounters.

The fact that he was able to think about something other than dodging, even if it was the immediate environment, was a fairly good indication that he had this fight just about handled. All he needed to do was reflect sludge onto the fire guy, fire onto the plant guy, and plant guy onto the sludge guy. Easy enough.