While Rory had implied uncertainty about the whereabouts of the Tyrant of Earth and Scales, that was hardly the truth. In fact, years back, they had discovered its whereabouts nearly fifteen miles out from Ehkorrus. It'd been discovered by accident by none other than Team MVM when they were on a hunting trip. Wandering far away, they'd uncovered what appeared like a mile-long gorge, the earth torn asunder and clawed apart as if a maddened god had brought vengeance to an arrogant earth spirit.

That was until they'd come face to face with the Territory Alpha itself, having appeared bursting free from the earth behind them. Only their tier, moderately lower than the Tyrant itself, saved them; the Tyrant had a well-documented apathy to anything weaker than a high-tier-six at the point in which they'd run into the Tyrant.

Fleeing with due haste, shortly after a travel embargo had been placed on anywhere within a three-mile radius of its home.

An embargo that had been well-respected until now that is.

Creeping through the forest of orange trees, Rory paid attention to the state of his suppression rings. Now that he was tier seven, if the Tyrant caught a whiff of him, it was game on, which Rory wanted to avoid for the time being.

Plus, the goal of his mission was subterfuge, not open combat.

Finally, after what felt like ages, Rory began to see signs of his destination: trees torn apart and knocked down in large numbers, and the earth was torn up.

Wonder how it managed to tear up so much dirt.

Perhaps it had dug it all up, but based on the reports of the inner gorge, that was a lot of terraforming for regular old digging.

The trees were increasingly shredded and torn apart until no trees were left. Barren of trees, Rory entered the true home of the local Territory Alpha. It was… well, the reports didn't quite do it justice. It reminded Rory of the industrial strip mines on Earth, with a slight hint of warzone splashed in for extra fun.

He was still, thankfully, wearing his dark-hued fatigues from the battle with his Chosen Bane. Its raw potency was his best option, given that the Territory Alpha was in known lands that required no extra planning around. Furthermore, he was bending a small net of premature illusions around him, making it so anything in his direction would hopefully not notice something off about how the light seemed to distort and paint a picture like a smudged image.

Coming to rest further in, he settled down, glancing around as Rory nodded to himself.

This should do.

Grabbing something from his pocket, he stabbed it into the dusty topsoil. Creeping onward, Rory began to circle the perimeter, planting small red stones intermixed with crystalline gems into the earth. Once he'd made a complete circuit, taking far less time than one might expect given his advantage of moving at tier-seven speeds, Rory began to direct himself to the very heart of the Territory Alpha's… territory.

Bit redundant. Eh, still fits, though.

Inching closer, on guard the entire time, it wasn't long until Rory stood near the heart of the area, overlooking a waterless ravine.

This should be good.

Rather than grab something from his pocket, Rory briefly unslung the bag with him, pulling free a crimson and crystal obelisk roughly two feet tall. Giving one more hesitant look around, Rory stabbed the stake into the earth before quickly pushing a mound of dirt to cover it completely.

He'd made it in the last year since he'd begun plotting out what might be needed to best the Territory Alpha. Satisfied with his work, Rory began a quick retreat from the area.

That went surprisingly well, and- ahh shit, that's what I get for opening my big damn mouth.

Cresting a small hill, Rory found himself in a staring contest with none other than the Tyrant of Earth and Scales, several gouges in its armor suggesting it had been off murdering something, and with its overall power, the only things that could wound it as such were high-tier-six monsters or large pack of mid-tier-sixes.

For a moment, Rory considered if this was perhaps the golden opportunity to attack the monster, given that it had already partaken in a battle.

A thought that was banished a moment later as it opened its mouth, a grand torrent of power gathering as a glow began to emanate.

Fuck that, never mind!

Leaping to the side, it wasn't a moment too soon as a massive laser ripped through the small hill, blowing it up like the Death Star blowing up Alderaan.

Rory hadn't come prepared to fight to the death, so he opted to adopt the ancient way of his ancestors.

He ran the hell away.

Sprinting away as quickly as he could, he could make out the clear sounds of the Tyrant hot on his heels, its claws tearing up the earth as it moved far faster than some Godzilla-wannabe really should.

Grabbing a few crystals from his pocket, Rory flung them behind himself. Within an instant, he heard the sound of detonation as they exploded in the monster's face. However, the fact that the earth continued to tremble as it tore after him told him that it had barely noticed.

Already nearing the edge of its territory, it suddenly occurred to Rory that perhaps simply running away wasn't enough. If it wanted to, it would tear through the forest; the mundane-rarity trees would be as much resistance as a layer of saran wrap.

New plan!

Suddenly whirling around, the Tyrant's momentum worked against it as Rory brandished his banner, the impossibly sharp spearhead lashing forward. The Tyrant sensed the danger, dodging its head to the side as Rory inflicted a rather nasty-looking slash down its right side. Rory grinned like a madman as he saw the damage earned, a violent wave of satisfaction washing over him at how effective the weapon proved.

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"Sting a bit, eh?" Rory taunted as he waved the banner, a flash of color obscuring him momentarily as he avoided a smaller but no less deadly beam fired from the annoyed monster.

His new plan was simple: Wound it enough first that it wouldn't pursue him as he fled; not worth the fight, especially after it had already done a share of fighting prior.

Raising his hand poised as a gun, pneuma bullets began to rapidly fire out from his extended finger, seemingly accelerating halfway to the Tyrant as the air resistance slowing them was pierced, thanks to Rory's newest Seams Unseen skill. It wasn't a passive effect he could apply at whim; it took an active effort to infuse the bullets with the extra pneuma to cut through the air. Still, it was worth it as the Tyrant was again taken off guard by the bullets reaching it faster than anticipated.

Not bad.

Investing in pneuma hadn't increased his literal skill with pneuma manipulation, but he had decades of experience now; what had once been extremely difficult was now only a second or two of concentration. What the investment in pneuma had done was increase the pressure of the 'water hose' that represented his metaphorical usage of pneuma. So when the bullets struck the monster, rather than inflict no damage, he saw small chips of armored scales blown away. It was relatively minor damage, but it was more than he would have likely managed a tier ago.

Shrugging the unexpected bombardment aside, the Tyrant began to glow red.

Hmmm. Something tells me that's a bad sign.

Proving his future career as a P.I. wasn't dead yet, the Tyrant vindicated his belief as a shockwave of compressed air blasted outward, striking Rory like a wrecking ball. It tossed him back over a hundred feet as he bounced up out of a roll, his massively accelerated thoughts clearing any disorientation all but instantly.

An atomic breath, the ability to blast out hardened air, what else?

Stomping its foot to the earth, Rory instinctively dodged.

Alright, maybe not instinctively, so much as intuitively. Instinct was what Apostolos had plenty of, a sense without real reasoning. Rory had intuition — subconscious reasoning — which was made that much more powerful by his deep investment in cognition.

So, when the magma geyser erupted from beneath where he had just been standing, Rory was merely singed rather than immolated.

Patting out any lingering flames, Rory glared at the monster.

Atomic breath, hardened air, and volcanoes. At a minimum, it should have three more skills.

While the fight hadn't been anticipated, it wasn't as if Rory wouldn't try to capitalize where he could. It would make it much easier if he could ascertain some of the Tyrant's skills before their real battle.

He just had to not die in the meantime.

Doable. Rory thought to himself, without a hint of doubt. The Tyrant was probably more dangerous than the peak tier-six version of the Architect Bane. Still, it was a tier under him, even if it had more raw attributes than he.

Which was when the Tyrant decided it was time for Rory to adjust his expectations.

Rather than a red glow, the air began to shimmer with incandescent light that quickly dulled and darkened into black and brown shards.

Rory nearly instantly recognized the attack or sort of recognized the attack. Long ago, in a battle against the boss of the second floor of the Maw, it had utilized minuscule scales blown about to inflict massive damage. That was nearly exactly what the Tyrant was doing, forming scales from captured light.

Except much, much larger and that much more densely packed with energy.

Slamming his banner into the earth like a wizard's staff, Rory cast a hand forward as a shield was instantly projected into reality before dozens more appeared, looking far more phantasmal than the first. Flaring his aura imbued with his lattice affinity rather than his blood affinity, the phantasmal shields began solidifying into an interlocking dome of shields. It wasn't a moment too soon as the scales began to zip through the air, falling upon his dome like a rain of death. Using a single projected shield as an anchor point, he had conjured illusion-formed shields before giving them physical form with a triplet of woven skills. Before the fight against the Architect's Bane, using three skills -not counting Eyes of the Architect- in tandem was damn near impossible. Now, though, with the experience from the final moments of the battle with the Bane alongside the benefits of a tier-up, it had come far more easily to him.

Holding the line, one second passed, then another, until five turned to ten, ten into fifteen, and fifteen into a minute of constant bombardment as Rory found his entire body shaking under the onslaught.

Right. Even though I have the tier advantage, it is still, pound for pound, more powerful than me.

He'd gotten a bit cocky with the tier-up, but this was still a Territory Alpha.

Right. Time for a new, new plan.

Mind racing instantly, Rory felt confident he had something that would work.

Just a tad risky.

Bend the light to bombard the monster's eyes, launch his banner forward to hopefully strike the Tyrant with a severe if not fatal wound, yank it back, explode another disorienting blast of light and noise, and combine it with the chaos of the cloud of scales striking the earth all around him while he made his escape.

Brilliant…. Except for the instant I need to drop my shield.

There was a limit to how many workings he could hold at once, and even with a whole tier of growth, the scale of his shield wall ate up the good majority of his mental bandwidth needed.

Mentally processing the risk, Rory shrugged once.

It's that, or it wears me down before my shield gives, and I'm murdered by a billion flying scales.

Taking a deep breath, Rory put his strain to the side as he locked it away in a parallel mental thread. With one more breath, it was go time.

In a single instant, the shield dropped as Rory yanked his banner from the earth, launching it forward as a thread wove around the handle, and an explosion of light erupted from where the Tyrant stood. Still moving, Rory distantly felt the sting of scales striking his fatigues, which did a good job of holding strong for the moment they would be forced to endure the bombardment. Between the physical strength of his throw, the banner's natural ability to slice through space, and his own ability to now perceive and more easily strike at the seams in most things -air included- the banner flashed through the air as fast as a supersonic round, striking the monster in an instant. Feeling the impact through the thread of pneuma, Rory yanked the weapon back as he began to flee, throwing up another cacophony of disorientation from within the cloud of flying scales.

Distantly, Rory heard the sound of the Tyrant roar in pain. Still, he was entirely focused on simply fleeing for everything he was worth.

Using his tier seven capabilities for all they were worth, Rory was gone within moments; the Tyrant was left with a weeping wound that cried a stream of blood that could have been mistaken for oil. Snorting angrily, the Tyrant sniffed at the air, attempting to locate Rory. The lingering explosion of chaotic noise, light, and even scents did their job, keeping it from locking on as his suppression rings hid his aura like a wet blanket over a flame.

Running for five or so minutes, Rory covered nearly half the distance back to Ehkorrus. Panting heavily, he rested his back against a tree and slowly sank.

"Fuck,"

While rather sturdy, his barrier had accidentally put himself into check, only moments from checkmate. Glancing down at his body, Rory winced as he noticed tears in his fatigues. Even with a Rare-grade quality, even a few moments exposed to the onslaught of scales had nearly done him in. Wanting to rest his head in his hands, Rory raised them, only to stop as he stared at them confusedly.

Well, that doesn't seem right.

His left hand was fine; it was a bit muddied up, but it was fine. No, that wasn't where the problem lay.

It was his right hand that was the problem. Or, more precisely, the lack of a right hand, just a bloody stump where a hand had been.

Just God damn wonderful.

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