310 Convergence 7

As the massive monster collapsed with its lungs charred by Dax's particularly cruel spell, Dax paid no more attention to the dead monster, something which immediately proved to be a mistake when it once more started moving.

"What the fu-"

"Move!"

Luckily Lux was there to save the day, showing Dax aside as she brought down her zero point sword on one of the hydra's heads who had just attempted to bite him in half.

"HAAA!"

Cleaving through the hydra's thick scales with little effort, Lux nevertheless found herself unable to completely decapitate the creature as her sword was too short to actually reach all the way across its neck, luckily Alice didn't have that issue. Using the frankly absurd strength she had obtained with bio enhancements, Alice leapt into the air and spun, adding further momentum to the massive greatsword she sunk into the hydra's half decapitated head, severing it completely. 

"Retreat!"

Still, there were 8 additional heads to deal with, simply severing one wasn't going to kill the hydra as it had already proved way more resilient than Dax had ever imagined and as they were busy avoiding attacks from the other heads, the one Alice had just severed already started regenerating.

"What the hell is that thing!?"

"Don't know, don't care! Keep hitting it until it's dead!"

Spreading out and opening up the distance to avoid effective retaliation, Dax's team switched to long range fighting, except for a single person that is. As 3 of the hydra's heads came together to spew out fire, Mare saw her chance to strike as she had remained invisible using her spell parade and waited patiently. 

(Now!)

Emerging out of the surrounding shadows, Mare quickly closed the range to her target as her XMRA armour lit up, purple mana enhancing runes, creating intricate patterns collecting at her right hand as Mare's spell was taking shape.

"Pierce through."

Striking the Hydra's main body with an open palm, Mare injected her spell into its flesh underneath the sturdy armour before activating. Using the hydra's own flesh for fuel, Mare's spell created spikes out of crystalized blood which rapidly grew like a tumour inside its body, growing to pierce the hydra's hard scales from the inside out as the spell finally dissipated while Mare long since had disappeared from sight once more, eagerly awaiting the next opening to strike her opponent.

"That head is already regrown!"

"I got you Alice, lighting!"

In the sky above the hydra, Solaris spoke out a single word incantation as lighting leapt from her outstretched hand, striking one of the hydra's heads as it was about to complete a spell, causing the built up mana to run amok and explode inside the hydra's mouth. Flapping her pair of armour covered wings Solaris rapidly moved around in the sky as her XMRA's mana generator worked in overdrive to support the archangels intense apatite for mana, indicated by a pair of red hot glowing radiators extending out and downwards from her armour's lower back. While there was nothing overly fancy about the spells Solaris continued to sling out, the archangel struck with unparalleled precision, either interrupting the hydra's spells or striking its eyes or ears, such feats only possible with Solaris' extreme aptitude and experience with manipulating mana and weaving together spells in no time at all.

"IMI CAS, requesting urgent strike package delta! Approach 023 cleared hot!"

[IMI CAS CONFIRMS STRIKE MISSION, CLEARED HOT, SPLASH 5 SECONDS.]

While Phillipa was the one with least experience in using mana within Dax's group, she nevertheless made use of it while calling in fire support from IMI, although it was limited to enhancing the rounds her rifle fired and creating cover in the form of compressed bedrock. While a swarm of Viper cruise missiles headed for the hydra flew overhead, Phillipa rapidly relocated, sprinting into cover behind a tree where she brought out her rifle waiting patiently for the smoke the cruise missiles had created to clear.

"There you are… Now smile for the camera please!"

Singling out one of the hydra's heads, Phillipa slowed down her breathing as her aim steadied and the end of her rifle's barrel was surrounded in complicated runes glowing a faint purple.

"Anti material."

Completing the spell at the same time as she squeezed the trigger, Phillipa sniped one of the hydra head's eyes, the spell enchanted round pierced straight through the eye and drilled into the brain behind before exploding. With its brain destroyed, the hydra's head fell limply to the ground as the other 8 focused their immediate attention to where Phillipa had taken the shot from, but she had long since abandoned her previous shooting position and relocated as another wave of SATGM's from the Hornet close air support drones pelted the hydra.

"Lia, with me!"

"On it!"

Taking advantage of the attention the other Hellwalkers demanded from the hydra, Lux and Lia chose that moment to strike. Neither stealthy like Mare or enduring like Alice, Lux had optimised her XMRA for mobility and close range power. Injecting mana into the ground as she rapidly closed the distance to her target, Lux created a spell which shot up a platform of bedrock beneath her feet as a springboard towards her target. Using the additional cybernetic arms on the outside of her XMRA armour, Lux unsheathed all 4 of her zero point shortswords, rapidly slicing through a pair of hydra heads in a fury which lived up to her cybernetic addons 'Kali' designation. Barely keeping up with Lux in terms of mobility, Lia's choice of attack proved way more subtle than her superior's style, but it was still equally as destructive. Using a specially made bayonet and her keen sense of hearing, Lia quickly located a critical point on one of the hydra's long neck and easily pierced through its outer scales with a two handed stab, her left hand's palm resting on the butt end of the bayonet, connecting a highly specialized circuit in her XMRA armour.

"Purge."

With her bayonet connected to its circuit, Lia spoke a one word incantation to activate the spell which her XMRA armour had been specialized to use. The conduit now connecting to Lia's bayonet contained nothing more than normal air, but as Lia's spell activated it was suddenly superheated before being compressed to several hundred times that of normal atmospheric pressure before it was released into the hydra's neck trough Lia's bayonet, wreaking havoc on the hydra's internal organs counter propellant vented out of a port on Lia's elbow and her bayonet sank deeper into the now liquid internals of the hydra.

"A'lthz!~✿"

With a gleeful expression on their face, Ifrit created a bolt of dark lighting which seemed to absorb the surrounding light as it sprang forth and struck the open mouth of one of the hydra's heads, creating an explosion which completely severed its lower jaw. Not content with the damage they were causing, Ifrit unleashed a series of additional void lightning bolts while effortlessly darting around just above the ground using flight magic.

"Ahh~✿ You really just keep regenerating huh? Perfect~✿"

While Ifrit's extensive knowledge of lost magic and aptitude for magic was frightening in its own right, the most dangerous part of them was their absolute lack of empathy. In any kind scale of fighting Ifrit refused to hold back, aiming to quickly annihilate everything which stood in their way while taking pleasure in not only their opponent's pain but also the destruction they unleashed.

(We're getting nowhere like this…)

While his subordinates continued tearing the hydra and it's 9 heads apart, the hydra continued regenerating. Dax knew they had to do something before running out of steam and getting overwhelmed by the hydra's seemingly endless vitality, but he had no idea what they needed to do to kill the monster.

But he did have a few plans already in progress.

(IMI CAS, status on orbital bombardment?)

[IMI CAS, FIRST SALVO AWAY, SPLASH 90 SECONDS. STANDING BY FOR ADDITIONAL TASKING.]

(Confirmed, await report for effect on target, standby for final strike package guidance corrections.)

Dax had left Phillipa to take care of tasking the Viper cruise missiles from their orbital fire support, but he was personally orchestrating the strike which made use of the orbiting battlecruisers 420 mill railguns, requiring far more cooperation and timing than Phillipa had the patience for.

"Lilly, how is it looking?"

"Almost there."

While the others were fighting the hydra, Lilly had been busy weaving together a grand spell which aimed to finish it off. Standing in the middle of a several metre wide asymmetric spell formation, the outside of the small elver's XMRA armour was covered in a pattern of purple glowing runes which amplified her magic while multiple radiators extended out her back, radiating away the massive amount of waste heat her mana generator was creating while it attempted to keep up with Lilly's demands.

"After taking a closer look at the hydra I located 9 distinct masses of energy within its body, those should be its cores. I can take out 3, you take care of the others."

"Copy that."

Even with advanced, cutting edge technology from Lazarus, Lilly's glowing eyes were still far better at understanding the flow of mana within her targets, this was the only reason she had located its weak points.

(If we're lucky this will actually kill this hydra thing, if not we'll have to nuke it and just give up on investigating the other anomalies…)