Oren called for them to keep their positions, and Caleb moved in for another quick thrust as Thomas drew the beast's attention toward the front.
Their attacks were starting to leave bleeding spots, especially the attacks that came from Mira. She seemed capable of causing some lasting status effects of her own.
It was taking quite a bit of coordination to keep the openings available, but as Jacob prepared another spell to stop the boss from turning, he could see that their formation was doing what they had intended.
With the flow of battle reaching an equilibrium, Jacob finished his fully enhanced tier-one binding spell. He had been coiling it underneath the feet of the boss since the fight had started, and he signaled to Oren that it was ready.
Oren nodded as he narrowed his eyes and studied the flow of the fight for a moment. Then, he let out a short whistle, and the horns of the behemoth were caught by the construct instead of being parried or dodged, as Bran utilized the size and weight of the golem to hold the beast for a moment.
Jacob took that moment to unleash his combined earth and fire spell, Flaming Serpent, which caused a red-hot construct of hardened minerals in the shape of a large serpent to burst out of the ground under the boss and coil itself around its abdomen and its front right leg.
The behemoth was pissed off and tried to jump back on its hind legs, but the serpent constricted its body and front right leg enough to cause the beast to fall back down on its free front leg while swinging its head left and right.
The heated coils dug into the bound leg as it struggled, leaving it visibly injured beneath the spell.
The rest of the team had backed up slightly to give it room as soon as the whistle signal had been given, and each of them was glad they had.
The boss had started kicking with its hind legs since its weight was shifted to its front, and any of those wild kicks would put a team member out of the fight.
The struggle was putting a massive strain on Jacob's magic field, but as he got used to the struggle, he silently asked his magic for help, and it answered as a semi-sentient force.
While the strain on his magic hadn't lessened, the focus he required to deal with the strain did lessen, allowing him to layer another restrictive force on the boss, making it spend much more energy to thrash about and making it an easier target for his friends.
With the confidence to anticipate its erratic movements, the rest of the team joined in on the fight once more.
Blood started to paint the swampy ground black, and the burning, musky smell of the beast could be clearly smelled over the normal rotting stench of the mire and miasma.
Just as it seemed that the boss was slowing down, its eyes suddenly started to glow red, and it let out a deep yet loud growl that caused Jacob's teeth to rattle a bit.
Jacob knitted his eyebrows as he tried to remember what was about to happen from the last time he had fought the boss. However, all he remembered was that it had stopped Elara from casting her spell before being beaten down by Carlos and his team.
Trusting his gut feeling, Jacob called out to his friends, "Get away from it! Mira, get a tendon if you can!"
His friends heeded his call and moved away at a moment's notice, with Mira swinging around the back to take advantage of the behemoth's momentary pause and slicing a tendon in one of its hind legs with a skill that immediately went on cooldown before slipping away like a shadow.
The team realized a moment later that Jacob had made the right call as a wave of mud shot out from around the boss, taking the Flaming Serpent with it and making the team lose sight of the beast.
The wave also knocked the golem sideways into a deeper patch of muck, burying its widened feet and leaving Bran struggling to get it moving again.
Before anyone could react, the boss was right in front of Thomas with its horns leveled toward the brawler, forcing him to use his own system skill that amplified his defenses as he crossed his arms in front of his body.
The resulting attack caused him to shoot into the distance like a cannonball, causing Jacob to wince with worry. But he couldn't focus on Thomas at this moment, as the boss turned its gaze towards Oren as it shifted its body for another attack.
Luckily for Oren, the boss was now limping due to its damaged front leg from Jacob's spell and its hind leg from Mira's attack.
However, its own charge skill seemed mostly unaffected by the damage, and it used the skill as soon as it had Oren in its sights.
The delay in its turn allowed Oren to utilize his own defensive skill, but the attack was still too fast to dodge, and Oren was similarly shot into the distance, apparently stopped by a tree.
Jacob was too distracted to see what exactly happened, as he wanted to try to reduce the damage of the next attack.
As he noticed the boss turning towards him, Jacob immediately took flight.
"I'm going up!" he called, keeping himself low enough that the gauntlet's light still covered the group.
This seemed to confuse the enraged boss because it paused as it looked up at Jacob, leaving it wide open for an attack.
Both Caleb and Mira capitalized on the opening, with Caleb using his own charge skill to try to damage its other hind leg and Mira seemingly appearing out of nowhere to strike its skull directly.
While Caleb got his attack off, Mira's dagger slid harmlessly off the bone plating on the boss's skull, and both of them were hit with the mud attack, which caused them to be pushed off into the distance.
Jacob had failed to help them because he didn't think it could use that ability again so quickly, but he did prepare another spell.
Just as the mud cleared out, a large fireball with undulating green flames slammed into the face of the boss and exploded with a violent blast.
It caused the behemoth to cry out in pain, and Jacob noticed a few shards of bone scattering into the distance as the behemoth threw its head back from the force of the blast.
As Jacob readied another attack, the boss suddenly snapped its head towards him with an evil glint in its glowing blood-red eyes.
Jacob hastily finished forming his incomplete spell, shooting a large icicle as thick as a tree trunk towards the boss with a boost of air, but it wasn't as fast as it would have been if he had had the time to fully compress the air.
The beast, however, didn't move as it began to growl at the hovering mage. Even when the icicle struck the behemoth, causing a deep gash to form on its good front leg and exploding into shrapnel that caused further lacerations and even punctured one of its eyes, the boss continued staring at Jacob with hatred as its growl increased in intensity.
Jacob felt a sense of foreboding and dropped to the ground. He began to erect a shield of mire muck between himself and the boss in order to reduce the force of whatever the boss was planning, but he was only able to get a bit of material into place before the vibrations coming from its growling started to become unbearable.
He glanced over his shoulder to see Sera fainting from the sound as he was also forced to one knee, but his training in turning his core a second time allowed him to hold on through the pain.
Blood began to drip from his nose and ears, but he forced one last spell to form around the boss, which erected a harmless dome of water. However, it reduced the intense vibrations by over half, which allowed him to focus again and freeze the dome into solid ice.
The vibrations were no longer spreading freely through the swamp. Jacob could feel them hammering against the inside of the frozen dome and rebounding toward the beast while it continued pouring power into its attack.
The ice sculpture lasted a few seconds before shattering, but those few seconds had done what Jacob needed them to do. He experienced one final blast of intense vibrations from the growling, which rattled his brain and made his insides feel like they would explode, but then it suddenly stopped.
He looked towards the boss through his blurry vision but was able to tell that it was wobbling on its injured legs.
Blood was pouring out of every orifice it had in its body, and its wounds were also bleeding with renewed vigor, each cut exacerbated by the rebound of its own skill.
Jacob was still too disoriented to aim another attack at that moment, but he was pleasantly surprised to see the golem make a reappearance and start bashing the boss over the head with its blunt arms.
The construct was covered in mud, but apparently Bran had managed to get it unstuck and had recovered enough to get the golem back into the fight.
Jacob looked to his left, and sure enough, Bran was lying on his back, barely propped up on his left arm as he held his scepter in his right, fully focused on the boss even as blood flowed from his eyes and ears and ran from his nose and mouth.
I didn't even know he had it in him, Jacob thought in a daze as he tried to regain his own bearings.
A grimace from Bran and a crashing sound caused Jacob to turn his attention back to the boss just in time to see the construct being flung into the distance and landing on its own back. It seemed the backlash of the boss's own attack wasn't enough to keep it down for long.
The boss turned towards Jacob with a renewed hatred in its eyes, but was interrupted by a flash of red and yellow energies erupting from behind it.
The aura unleashed by both Oren and Thomas was felt as much as it was seen, and the speed demonstrated by both boys was entire levels beyond what they had previously demonstrated as they closed the distance between the boss and themselves in a matter of moments.
The behemoth hardly had the time to ready itself before bursts of yellow erupted all over its body as Thomas punched and kicked the beast without stopping, which prevented it from being able to retaliate.
Even when it did manage to position itself to catch the brawler mid-attack, Oren would appear with his own body glowing red to deliver a counter or parry, forcing the boss to retreat and take Thomas's attacks directly.
Caleb and Mira also joined in as they recovered from the attacks that had hit them, putting the boss on the back foot. But it seemed the boss wasn't quite ready for its demise, as it also started to glow with its own power.
The dark miasma around the boss thickened and began to slightly push the light from the gauntlet back, which increased the debuff in its immediate vicinity severalfold.
Caleb and Mira switched to hit-and-run tactics, spending as little time as possible in the thickened miasma. They could withstand brief moments in the draining miasma, but they needed to limit their exposure.
Thomas and Oren were a different story, however.
The use of aura from both of them put an incredible strain on their bodies, which they withstood through their endurance built up through hard training.
But remaining close to the boss left them exposed to the increased stamina-draining debuff, which caused both of their auras to be snuffed out, leaving them exhausted and unable to dodge the next attack.
By then, Jacob had regained enough of his bearings to get back on his feet, and he had a cushion spell at the ready when the boss erupted with its mud attack once again.
By putting a blast of air between the two boys and the mud wave, Jacob was able to utilize his gentle hand spell to pull them both to himself.
Mira and Caleb had anticipated the attack this time and were able to take precautions to avoid it, but were forced to retreat in the opposite direction from Jacob and the rest of the group.
This presented a dire problem as the behemoth squared up to Jacob and readied its charge once more.