No Need for a Core?

Ryuhoho felt the touch of Kazue's mind, and she informed him there was no need to hold back. That was freeing in some ways and galling in others. The challengers were not marked as hostiles, and that suggested he was not strong enough to be a serious risk to their lives if he did not need to hold back. Not that he had any desire to kill, but one wanted to be strong enough to defend their nest. But he also understood that his role was as much tester as defender, and his strength without the support of his friend reflected the level of testing he was supposed to be able to do.

Those thoughts flickered across his mind as he dove from his perch, and the huntress dashed away from the entrance shouting “Flier! New Boss!” He managed to dodge her hasty shot, then strafed across her and the wolf with his fire breath. The dracobit didn’t even take the time to evaluate the effects of his attack as he beat his wings hard to gain altitude again, knowing better than to let himself get caught on the ground if he could help it.

He only allowed himself to get a good look at the ground when he threw himself into a looping spin to make tracking him difficult. Unfortunately, the huntress had gained her footing and was quite the shot when stable, so he did not quite dodge this arrow. Thankfully his scales were hard enough that a glancing strike did not draw any blood, but it still hurt.

The kitsune were spreading out below him, switching their tactics to avoid being caught in a tight bunch rather than trying to create aerial cover with only a couple of shields. The singed-fur wolf was retreating at the command of his mistress, while the front line had dropped or sheathed shields and weapons in order to unlimber bows. They had quickly realized that Ryuhoho’s range was longer than most could flick their foxfire, though Ryuhoho noted his mistress's amusement at that. It seems that Mordecai had shown her how to focus herself so that she could throw her foxfire much further. The mage didn’t have to worry about a weapon change and was quick to cast a bolt of force that Ryuhoho desperately tried to dodge, but the unerring bolt followed his maneuvers perfectly, and it hurt when it slammed into his chest, a lot more than the arrow had.

Well, he had his primary target now, and he growled at the robed kitsune woman. The priest he ignored, despite recognizing that the priest was chanting a prayer to support his allies. This was partly because of his current focus on the wizard, and partly because it was part of the general orders that Mordecai had passed out to specifically not target healers, though there were no restrictions about them being caught inside of other attacks.

Ryuhoho tucked in his wings to drop fast, the huntress’s next arrow clearing a bare whisper above his back. He only snapped his wings back out when he was close enough to catch the mage with an arc of electricity from his horn, and as soon as the arc was let loose he rolled to his right, then strained his wings to interrupt the loop in a sudden jerk. Despite the desperately erratic movement, the next arrow scratched a shallow groove across the scales on his right foreleg. Part of him wanted to try taking out the huntress instead, but even as he started climbing again the mage had shaken off the trembling of being shocked and brought her hands together in another spell, releasing a cone of icy shards. He was agile enough to avoid the worst of the blast, and the layers of draconic nature he’d been forged with provided some resistance to the elements, but it still hurt, and one of the shards hit hard enough to crack a scale and draw blood.

The spark of energy in his chest had rebuilt since he’d released his fire, so as he started gaining altitude again he released his breath again, this time channeling his breath weapon into ice. The priest had been moving toward the mage to provide healing and got caught in the edge of his blast, but the mage was caught off guard, getting slammed with the full brunt of his attack.

It was less effective than he’d have liked. Oh, he’d elicited a sound of pain, and patches of ice clung to her robes and skin, but the three-tailed kitsune only staggered a moment before forcing herself to begin chanting her next spell. Three arrows flew near him from the three warriors as he flew his erratic path toward the ceiling, but he was tiring already after such extreme exertion, and he felt certain that the next shot from the huntress was going to get a solid bite in his flesh, and he didn’t like the green glow forming around the mage’s hand.

“Stage two,”

Kazue’s command swept over him, and the direction of down lurched to the side as Zushi dropped into the room from the ceiling. Ryuhoho was only lightly touched by Zushi’s aura, but it made everyone else lurch slightly as they had to reorient their balance. The dracobit abandoned the fight to his tougher friend and dove towards a trap door, the piece of floor rotating around him as he exited to leave a patch of sticky goo facing up.

By the time she’d given that command, the shrine maidens had made it to the second floor, and Kazue was doing her best to keep a straight face as they worked on the puzzles.

A dark-furred kitsune named Tia eyed her and dryly asked, “Would the high mistress of secrets care to illuminate her friends and guests with a clue or two?”

Kazue smirked. “Oh, but I already have.” She replied as she bopped her friend lightly on the nose. And it was true, after all she’d been quietly humming the correct notes and beats, though now that their attention was focusing on her, she stopped. It wouldn’t do to help even her friends too much.

Tia rolled her eyes in frustration, then paused to consider Kazue’s words. “Hmm.” The six of them consulted for a moment, then reexamined the puzzles as they listened closely. Tia grinned. “Oh, I think this is going to be easy.”

And she was not wrong. Realizing the nature of the puzzles had been their mental block, and once they were on the right track, well, all shrine maidens were trained in music and dancing. Tones and rhythm came naturally to them.

While her friends worked on those puzzles, Kazue continued to monitor the battle on the first floor. Zushi tanked a few hits from people with ranged attacks, with the priest joining in with a bolt of fire, while the front-line warriors scrambled to scoop up shields and unsheathe weapons. With his nature, those did a lot less damage than they would to most, and he took that absorbed energy to channel into Ryuhoho.

His energy-draining attack was reserved for more serious battles, so he limited himself to leaping head butts, which were devastating enough given his mass. The dracobit reentered the fight when he felt refreshed enough and came through a trapdoor right behind the spear wielder. Zushi rammed her at the right moment to make her stumble backward and get temporarily trapped in the now exposed sticky side. Ryuhoho zipped straight for the ceiling, where he charged up his horn for a powerful blast on the three warriors who had formed up to challenge Zushi directly.

There was a little more give and take, with melee focusing on Zushi and the ranged focusing on Ryuhoho, but then the wizard noticed that Zushi barely seemed harmed and that Ryuhoho had an aura of vitality about him despite having taken a few more hits by then. “Stop attacking the rabbit, only attack the flier!” Kazue smirked and called her bosses off. She felt satisfied giving them the win for having figured the tactic out, it was only the first floor after all, and she’d made them spend more resources than they’d wanted to. She was beginning to see how this sort of fighting could be a fun if dangerous game. Maybe it was easier since she wasn’t feeling the pain, but both Zushi and Ryuhoho still felt ready to keep going, wanting to face that challenge. She gave them mental kisses on their heads and told them that they’d done very well, but it was time to let others have a chance too.

The six shrine maidens were practically swarming their way through the second floor while the other group was still fighting the first-floor bosses, the added complexities barely slowing them down as they cheerfully bounced in place to find a beat and then gracefully scooped the fragile crystal marbles out of the air. At the end of the second floor Kazue decided to join in a little, leaping into the center of the rabbits to join them as they began their little dance. She finished with a bowing curtsy to the cheers and applause of her friends, and it made her quite warm and happy. She had missed them all.

“I think you will really enjoy the next floor. But I am going to abandon you to just watch after you meet some other friends of mine, I am afraid your attention will be otherwise occupied anyway.” Kazue flashed them a grin and led the way forward without answering the immediate questions. Sometimes surprises were much more fun after all. She had already updated the directors of each stage of the roles that the shrine maidens would do best in, so naturally they weren't going to be slotted into anything but those sorts of roles.

Her friends reacted much as Kazue had anticipated to the laganthros, squeals and coos abounding as the girls wanted to pet and cuddle the little rabbit people. Most of them didn’t mind the attention, though the director was a bit disgruntled at the delay in getting his production started. So Kazue gave him a little personal attention and told him how happy she was with his work, and that seemed enough to mollify him. She might have even caught a hint of a smile on his lips.

Once the other girls were settled in, Kazue headed out to the balcony to enjoy watching their performance. The group up on the first floor had taken about half an hour to rest and recover, and were now heading out onto the second floor. She briefly had the temptation to arrange some comedy by adjusting part of the muddy slope to guarantee that all six of them landed in a heap together, the poor unfortunate priest squished by five lovely women, but that would not be fair to them, and three of them were wearing breastplate and chain, someone could get hurt doing that.

So instead she settled in to watch them start making their way carefully across the glass-like first section. The huntress chose to go barefoot in her hybrid form, taking advantage of the wide area of a human foot compared to a digitigrade foot, and had little issues except with the patches of cold when they were bombarded by the flying dire rabbits. The three warriors had the most issues as the weight of their armor made being even slightly off balance more troubling on the slick surface, though the weight did at least increase their traction a little. Being dive-bombed by various fliers caused them to spread out enough to not be easily targeted, but they still maintained a loose formation until they reached the wall.