Lauri hadn't even had a moment to process his surroundings when he heard Danse's cry.
"It's going for the Rhino!"
Without a moment's delay, Lauri dashed out from his quarters. Burning essence, he moved through the living space, past the kitchen and into the pilot's cabin. Which is when Lauri saw it through the windshield, the figure wrapped in a cloak darker than the night. It lashed out at Mele and Sansa as it moved towards the Rhino.
Gazing beneath the figure's being, Lauri saw its four cores.
As the figure leapt toward the Rhino, Lauri's gaze moved past it. Settling on Katrina, the young woman was lying on the ground, not moving. Vick was already by her side, her threads moving through Kat's armour to tend to her wounds.
Lauri's expression darkened.
Stepping toward the windshield, Lauri moved with such force that it felt inevitable he would hurl himself through it, splintering the windshield into thousands of shards of glass. But just before impact, his form began to falter – activating [Light Dash], it took less than a second for Lauri to disappear. Light spilt outward where he had stood, gathering into a single, searing streak.
That streak – Lauri transformed – lashed forward and pierced the windshield without resistance, slipping through the glass like dawn through an open curtain, leaving not a crack behind, only the ghost of brightness in its wake as he shot forward.
Reaching the Gate Guardian, Lauri rematerialised. Raising his hand, a long blade forged of light appeared between his fingers as he clashed with the dark figure's staff.
Momentum held the two in the air for a few moments. Lauri and the Devil locked gazes.
And then they burst into action.
Attempting a second strike, the Devil thrust its staff toward Lauri.
Lauri met it without hesitation. A wall of light formed between them, catching the attack with a sharp flash. The moment the staff struck it, Lauri drove the barrier forward, slamming it into the Devil and crushing it into the ground. The construct shattered on impact, dissolving back into drifting light.
The Devil recovered quickly, its dark cloak shifting and twisting in the wind. It darted toward the edge of the Rhino's headlights, seeking the safety of the darkness.
Lauri's form dissolved into light as he gave chase, closing the distance in a streak of brilliance. Though only an Awakened Devil, the creature moved with unnatural speed - fast enough to escape him… for a moment.
It slipped into the night.
And again Lauri answered with [Light Dash].
He surged forward, reappearing on its heels as swords formed around him. With a flick of his wrist, he unleashed them.
They should have struck.
But they didn't.
The projectiles passed through the Devil's cloak, slamming harmlessly into the dirt.
Lauri's eyes narrowed.
Despite this unexpected development, he pressed the attack.
The two clashed again and again, each collision interrupted by the bursts of light that tore through the night as Lauri relentlessly closed the distance, refusing to let the Devil escape.
His feet dug into the snow as Lauri cast his sword aside. Fixing his gaze on the Devil, he drew in a slow breath.
And then he summoned a barrage of blades.
Swords of light formed around him, dozens at once, before streaking forward in a radiant storm. They tore through the night, converging on the Devil from every angle.
The folds of the cloak swallowed them, allowing most of the blades to pass through, crashing into the ground a moment later.
But not all of them.
The Devil moved, its staff snapping up in sharp, precise motions. Each strike was accompanied by that faint jingle as it shattered several of the incoming blades, deflecting them before they touched it.
Still, the barrage continued.
"Lauri!"
Lucky's voice cut through the chaos.
"Don't aim for it – aim for the gaps!"
Lauri tilted his head toward the younger man, not taking his eyes off the Gate Guardian.
"The cloak – it's something about the cloak! You have to get around it! That's the only way to hit its body!"
As Lucky shouted, the Devil drove its staff into the ground.
The impact echoed, and the shadows answered.
From beneath its cloak, something larger began to emerge. Not the skittering swarm from before, but a heavy shape that forced its way out, splitting the darkness as it emerged.
A massive armoured beetle, its chitin thick and ridged, dragged itself into the light cast by the Master. Easily twice the size of the others. Unlike the smaller beetles, this one rose up, the simple blades of light broke as they struck the large beetle's chitin.
Lauri's eye twitched in annoyance.
With a flick of his hand, light gathered and stretched, forming a long spear in his grasp. Unlike the last Gate Guardian Lauri had fought, when he was almost running out of essence. Lauri had rested; his soul was almost full of light, and he had enough essence to allow himself to get creative.
Light and essence poured into the weapon, condensing along its length. The spear brightened, its form sharpening as the light within it grew denser, heavier – until it hummed with barely contained power.
This was no longer a simple construct that would break from a single powerful strike.
Lauri hurled the spear at the barrier beetle.
The tip sliced through its shadowed chitin as if it weren't there, punching through into the soft flesh beneath. Light detonated within the creature, bursting out the other side in a spray of shattered shell and torn meat.
In a flash of brilliance, Lauri appeared beside it. He seized the spear wrenching it free from the beetle's ruined body.
As the large beetle collapsed, Lauri rounded on the Devil. His eyes glowed with loathing as he raised the spear and stepped forward.
The Devil met him halfway.
Their weapons met with a sharp crack. The Devil flowed with the impact, its cloak twisting unnaturally as it redirected the force, its staff snapping back toward Lauri in a fluid counter.
Lauri twisted aside, the strike grazing past him as he drove his spear forward – aiming not at the figure, but at the shifting folds of its cloak.
The spear slipped through layers of dark fabric, missing by inches as it got lost in the cloak as it shifted.
A faint jingle rang through the air as it struck, but Lauri met it with the shaft of his spear, deflecting the blow before stepping in closer. Light flared along the weapon as he pressed the attack, each strike sharper, faster than the last, as Lauri became accustomed to how it moved, how it fought.
Again and again, they clashed, light against shadow.
The Devil twisted, evading, its movements flowing without pause, the cloak constantly shifting, hiding, and redirecting his attacks.
But Lauri was adapting.
The difficulty wasn't striking the Devil. If it were that simple, Lauri would have ended the fight moments after it had begun. The difficulty was striking its true body – the one it hid so perfectly beneath its cloak. Even perceiving the gaps in that shifting fabric felt impossible, as though the cloak itself denied him the ability to see them.
The only reason Lauri knew they existed at all was because of the Devil's limbs.
His eyes narrowed as he tracked the fabric – finally Lauri saw it, a gap in the fabric.
Lauri's spear slid down the length of the Devil's staff, sparks scattering as the two weapons scraped together.
Then he shifted his grip. The spear twisted, following the line of the Devil's arm as it cut through it. Lauri didn't stop moving; just damaging its arm was far from his goal. The motion carried through, driving the spear forward through it.
The spear slipped through the gap in the shifting cloak and struck, piercing the Devil's body directly.
The Devil faltered for a moment as Lauri finally landed an attack on the Gate Guardian.
Before the Devil could recover, Lauri reached forward, following the spear's shaft. Lauri's fingers curled around the cloak, channelling essence through his arms. Lauri tore the cloak away, revealing the Devil's body
The cloak tore free, and what lay beneath was nothing like a body at all.
It was simply a mass. A mass of writhing flesh with something beneath attempting to push outward with limbs – too many half-formed limbs stuck out from its body.
To Lauri, this meant nothing, but to the other Irregulars who had been watching him fight. They realised something.
The beetles weren't being summoned. They were being shed – fragments of its own body, breaking away without direction. That was why it wasn't a Tyrant, it didn't command the beetles, it simply… produced them and used its affinity with the shadows to armour them.
Not that it mattered anymore.
With his spear still lodged deep within the Devil's chest, Lauri tightened his grip and pulled.
The blade tore upward, ripping through the writhing mass, splitting flesh as it carved a path up toward the shoulder. The Devil convulsed, its body twisting violently around the wound – but Lauri didn't stop.
He wrenched the spear free in a spray of blood, pivoting in the same motion.
And with a final, decisive slash – he took its head.
The strike cut clean through what passed for a neck, severing it in a single motion.
Lauri took a step back as the Gate Guardian's head dropped to the floor, its body slumping down beside it.
[You have slain an Awakened Devil, Lurker Hive]