Zelda fired the ability she’d been charging.
Ability: Inferno Shot
You fire an explosive, superheated blast that ignores 50% of the target’s armor. Deals 3x base damage to all targets in range (allies included). Takes 7 seconds to charge (must be stationary).
Except she didn’t just use Inferno Shot. She also activated her hammer-gun’s special ability, Triple Threat. An Inferno Blast fired from the end of the weapon, and then another. And a third.
The first blast hit the closest wall and, with the damage boost from Sniper Mode, obliterated it. The explosion shook the entirety of the labyrinth and the whole wall came down in a crash of dust and debris.
The second Inferno Shot burst through the cloud and slammed into another wall which was also reduced to rubble. The camera drone recording it had to zoom out to keep the blast in frame.
The third Inferno Shot carried on even further, passing through the holes the first two blasts had created. The camera drone was forced to pan to follow the attack. The massive, glowing shot almost disappeared in the ever-thickening clouds of dust from the prior explosions – right up until it too struck a wall, this one almost all the way at the exterior of the labyrinth, and reduced it to dust.
Zelda was forced to stand still for five more seconds in order to exit Sniper Mode. While she did, silence settled over the labyrinth, broken only by the pieces of wall still crumbling and crashing to the ground.
Kaiden looked over to find Odditor stunned into silence at the sight. Now there’s a rarity. But even with shock plastered all across his features, the man was smiling.
“Admiring her handiwork?” Kaiden asked and Odditor turned toward him.
“She’s a, a special one.”
“That she is,” Kaiden agreed, then looked back to the wall-sized monitor. It showed Zelda exiting Sniper Mode and regaining the ability to move again. The dust in front of her was settling, or at least most of it had been caught in the wind and whisked away to another part of the labyrinth. With it gone, everyone was free to admire exactly how much damage Zelda had done.
Three walls had been blown completely away. The gaping path of destruction where the wall had previously stood cut through several different corridors and created an impromptu path that led toward the exterior wall of the labyrinth. That one was still standing, but considering everything he’d seen so far, Kaiden was half convinced Zelda was going to find a way to bring that one down too.
She turned back toward the flag.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Odditor, it’s been fun, but I think it’s time I headed out.”
With a calm, smooth gesture, she reached out and wrapped a hand around the billowing red flag. It came free from its stand with the slightest of clicks—
And all hell broke loose.
If the labyrinth had any tricks left, it abandoned them in favor of releasing seemingly every mob it had.
Back in the direction of the cave, the ground erupted as a massive worm burst from below, its body as long as a corridor and its jaws gaping. Teeth that looked too much like stalagmites and stalactites were thrust forward as the worm surged toward Zelda.
Angler Worm **Gargantuan**
Level: 60
Kaiden’s visor began to read out quick facts but he didn’t have time to pay attention as a flood of abyssal weeviles burst up like a geyser in the wake of the Angler Worm. They rushed forward, a screeching swarm of teeth and claws. Those at the top of the swarm burst into flame beneath the glare of direct sunlight, but their numbers were so great those on the bottom were shaded. Every few paces more and more of the weeviles burned up, but still the swarm came.
And then there were the grachnids. The monitors on Odditor’s wall flicked from view to view as all across the labyrinth every burrow was vacated and every hidden door opened. Grachnids and grachnid punishers charged toward the center of the maze in a stampede of chitin and fury.
“The labyrinth reacts to your actions,” Kaiden said, recalling Odditor’s warning. “I, uh, don’t think it cared for your grand finale.”
“What makes you think that?” Zelda asked as her shield flicked back on, returning from being overloaded. At the moment, though, running was the best option by far, and she broke into motion. She sprinted toward the hole she’d created and clambered over the remains of the first wall just as the Angler Worm crushed the flag podium in its haste to follow her.
The abyssal weeviles caught up to Zelda first and the swarm surged around her, biting and clawing in a suicidal frenzy. Each one that broke from the shade provided by its dying siblings above soon burst into flame itself, but not before getting an attack in on Zelda. She forced her shield over her head but her health plummeted beneath their assault.
Fifty-percent. Forty-seven. Forty-four. By the time she descended the rubble of the first wall she was down to forty-one percent.
“Something to remember me by,” she growled, then fired an Improved Warden’s Bolt up into the swarm. Dozens of the weeviles dropped as she sprinted away.
She reached the remains of the second wall just as the army of grachnids rounded a corner. Zelda climbed frantically, pulling herself over the massive chunks of debris. The first of the grachnids reached the pile right behind her and began scampering up on unsteady footing. Several stopped to slash at her heels, most missing but a few connecting. For each of those that stopped, however, another rushed past it.
Zelda reached the top of the mountain of rubble and a shadow rose up to tower over her from behind.
“Jump!” Kaiden shouted through comms and Zelda flung herself forward into a bouncing slide down the rubble pile. Her health took a beating, but it was far less damage than she would have taken had
