“Is your soul so eager to be devoured, Enemy?”
Abaddon spread his arms, then joined them. A wave of flame ran down them, materializing into a huge fiery poleaxe.
The mist in the air dispersed, the geysers emitting the strange substance calmed down, but I still couldn’t move.
“For the Inferno!” Abaddon roared and started running toward me.
The fight began. At that same moment, Dazed lifted and I shot straight at him. An instant before the boss’s poleaxe descended, I entered Clarity, flew straight to his red-hot face and launched a full Combo.
Flying away and hovering in the air, I went back to normal speed, took a breather to let my spirit recover, dodging the charging boss’s horns and counterattacking.
In the first minutes of the battle, there didn’t seem anything supernatural about Abaddon, fearsome general of hell. He just attacked with his hooves, his horns, the fiery poleaxe that suddenly appeared in his hands.
I saved my spirit for dodging the boss’s physical attacks and for launching counterstrikes. Abaddon burned with an Infernal Aura like Despot’s, so I could only attack up close in short bursts, delivering a few strikes with Storm Fists.
After taking critical damage from a Hammerfist to the face, Abaddon flew into a rage, clapped his hands and knocked me out of Clarity! Echo of Purgatory, it turned out, deprived me of all my skills for three seconds. I crashed to the ground, rolled into a wall.
“Well now, time to lose!” the boss roared.
Covering himself with his shield to block my path to him, Abaddon struck the ground with his arms. The floor went out from under me, began to shift, then bubbled up in huge boils that popped like cysts, divulging fifteen-foot copies of the demon’s tentacle-like arms. They all turned their palms toward me, each with an eye at its center, then lunged like attacking snakes. There was no way I could dodge them at normal speed, but luckily, I got Clarity back just in time. The hands covered the spot where I had just been lying, the fingers crooking and scrabbling across the stone. Finding nothing, they pulled their way back into the floor, which evened out again. The main thing was to stay calm when the boss knocked me out of Clarity with his Echo of Purgatory.
Soon Abaddon showed me another ability — Diabolical Flame — when he leaned back and then breathed out lime-green acid steam. I nearly died when the cloud first hit me. Then I realized that the boss’s pose predicted what he was about to do, and I had around a second to get safe and attack back. But there was another problem — the cloud of deadly gas birthed thirteen tiny imps that got stronger with every second. They mobs went down to a couple of Hammerfists, but I had to kill them while they were still small.
Abaddon also fired off Strings of Chaos. I veered between them in Clarity. The blistering air emanating from them dealt me only a little damage thanks to my Infernal Tenacity buff. After Resilience, the damage from Strings of Chaos was pitiful.
When the boss’s health was down to 75%, he filled with blinding light and flared up in bright white flames. Breath of the Underworld (-9% health every second for 10 seconds) turned the entire cave into a blast furnace. The heat burned away my gear, but I survived, again thanks to Infernal Tenacity, which reduced the damage to tolerable levels.
I was blinded, couldn’t fight. Flames seemed to materialize all around me, pressing in from all sides. Powerless to withstand it, I fell and curled up in a fetal position. That was when I realized that there was no way my allies could have survived ten seconds at the center of that nuclear explosion without Infernal Tenacity. That calmed my conscience while the boss was casting.
I held on only thanks to Combo. The Lifesteal property the move gained way back in the sandbox turned a portion of the damage dealt into health, which saved me.
It took me around ten minutes to get the boss’s health down to 50%, but it felt like half a day! And all because I was saving my spirit, letting it fill up a little between counterattacks. Toward the end of the second phase of the battle, Abaddon cast Weak Will again, and I had to chew up another coin to lift the debuff.
“I never thought this would come into play…” the boss said thoughtfully as he turned into another form.
It was still Abaddon, but more of the demonic broke through to his humanoid surface: his nostrils flared, his head seemed to split into two pieces and a second mouth yawned through the gap, the first row of teeth now like a palisade of fangs, the second a chain of fine needles. The body grew larger, wider, and plates of Corrupted Adamantite grew all over it.
“Within my veins flows the blood of devils, mortal. Let’s see what you say to this!”
After flaming me with Breath of the Underworld to keep me on my toes, Abaddon spat out liquid Flame of Cathexis. It covered the area around me with blue fire. I jumped away, but still got a debuff:
Level 1 Cathexis
You take 15% more demonic damage.
Already exhausted by the fight, I nearly gave up. Any mistake now could mean total defeat! I flew around and dodged Abaddon’s attacks, now coming at me several times faster. I stayed ready to activate Clarity at any second, so I could jump away from Flame of Cathexis if the boss suddenly decided to spit more of it. The debuff had a number on it, which made me think that the stuff might stack every
