Chapter 201

Like the last time Zoey had fucked a goo-monster into submission, her opponents lay on the ground, their bodies seeming to dissolve. Blaze lay collapsed on her back, her hand on her forehead as she panted, and Ignis on her stomach, groaning softly, the two of them turning into lava pancakes as their bodies lost solidity.

Though Zoey was also exhausted and would very much like to lay back and catch her breath, she forced herself to sit up after only a moment. Because the fight wasn’t over. She knew without an explicit announcement that she had won against Ignis and Blaze, but that didn’t mean the bigger problem had been solved—the rampaging twenty-foot elemental who was the real boss.

Rosalie, Delta, and Maddy had been fighting the thing tooth-and-nail the whole time. Zoey’s encounter against the two smaller elementals had hardly lasted forever—or even all that long, considering how good their bodies had felt—but even a handful of minutes was a long time when fighting for one’s life.

“So, I won?” Zoey asked, just to confirm.

“Don’t be ... too proud of that fact, human...” Ignis groaned, the words muffled by how she was lying stomach-down, face pressed into the floor. Or rather, her own gooey body, since she was melting.

“I don’t know, Ignis,” Blaze panted, her words clearer because of how she was lying on her back. “I think she can be proud. That was amazing.”

Ignis huffed, shooting her ally an irritable look. Then she looked at Zoey. “So, what is it you wish of us, then?”

“What I wish of you?”

“You’ve asserted your dominance,” Ignis said, sounding not entirely pleased by the fact. “We’re yours for the rest of the fight.”

“You ... are?” Zoey asked. Mel hadn’t worked like that, but then again, Mel had been a solo encounter. Would all fights with ‘add-ons’ work similarly, or was it just this one?

Getting to her feet—and swaying a bit as she did—Zoey appraised the fight. She considered the best way to join back in. And also the best way to utilize her two hard-earned allies. Though, considering their gooey exhaustion, Zoey had maybe done too good a job of fucking them to their breaking point.

Zoey was two things, when it came to combat: a mage, but also an alchemist. And there was one category of potion she’d yet to put to good use. The extinguishing potions.

“Could you rejoin him, you think?” Zoey asked, an idea forming in her head.

“Rejoin him?” Blaze asked. “Why would you want us to? Shouldn’t we fight?”

Zoey pulled a potion out from her inventory and presented it to Blaze, waggling it between two fingers. “I’ve got a feeling,” Zoey said, “that if I can get this thing to go off from inside an elemental, it’ll do some serious work.”

Blaze tilted her head, presumably reading the item’s description. If monsters could even do that. “Hm,” she said after a moment. “I suppose it’s worth trying.”

“It won’t hurt you though, right?”

“Of course it will,” Blaze snorted. “It’ll be going off on us, too. But we’re all the same boss. And it’s not like you can kill us.”

“It’s our duty as the defeated party,” Ignis grumbled.

Zoey didn’t like the idea of her two partners getting caught in the crossfire, but as Blaze had said, boss monsters couldn’t actually be killed. They were the shard itself, if anything Mel had said was to go by. Their defeats would always be temporary.

“Okay, well, not to rush you or anything,” Zoey said, pulling out the second potion, this one for Ignis. “But yeah, join back into his body, and get as deep as you can. Then break those potions. Head or chest, I guess, wherever you think will do the most damage.”

With visible effort, the two melting lava-girls tugged themselves back into coherency. They staggered to their feet. Zoey sympathized with their exhausted motions. They’d wrung her out as much as she had them, after all.