[h1][center][color=9e0b0f]Lavinia[/color][/center][/h1]
While the other members of the guild were fighting for their lives and probably being scarred forever by the traumatic experience, Lavinia was… Hanging back. Waiting for the right moment.

It wasn’t that she was a coward, exactly. She’d prefer to call it ‘recognizing the realities of the situation.’ They could pile up as much damage as they wanted on the dragon, but unless they managed to land a decisive strike and kill it for good, the monster would just regenerate from everything. Her blood thorns could slow that process down, but with its healing accelerating with every passing second there was only so much she could do.

There was no other option. Forget about the constantly-healing body, they had to take out its brain… somehow.

Problem was, Lavinia had already hit the skull with her Impaler-Helsing combination, and it hadn’t worked. The damn thing was just too durable. She had one spell that might be powerful enough to punch through, but that would require her getting close, and would probably nearly kill her if she used it. And even if she didn’t want her guildmates to die, she wasn’t ready to throw her own life away for their sake.

So it was time to get creative.

Opening her grimoire, she summoned up another huge blood-spike beside her, feeding it fluid and growing it to a massive size. At the same time, she kept her eyes on the fight, waiting for an opening. With her ears already protected, the dragon’s screeching didn’t both her too much, though unfortunately the blood covering meant that she couldn’t hear Marduk too well either. [color=9e0b0f]”Shut it, old man! You think I take orders from you?”[/color]

Then Zenith decided to go full-throttle, and Lavinia quickly shielded her eyes as she saw him gathering magical energy into a sphere. [color=9e0b0f][i]There! This is my chance![/i][/color]

She wasted no time in seizing it. As soon as the flash had gone off, she peeked out, concentrating on the dragon’s head once more. The blood scattered everywhere by Zenith’s attack converged all at once, forming a sharp crimson spear aimed right at the epicenter of where the blast had gone off.

[color=9e0b0f][i]Move… more…[/i][/color] Holly sliced open its neck, and blood poured from the wound, flying towards the head and combining with the giant thorn. Raindrops splashed into the blood and merged with it, increasing the weapon’s density and power. Clenching her fist hard enough to draw blood of her own, Lavinia let off a [color=9e0b0f][b]Helsing[/b][/color] spell, plunging the weapon as deep as it would go into the already weakened skull.

…It still wouldn’t be enough. Even with her taking advantage of Zenith’s attack, even with Holly and Astoria providing indirect assistance, this was still fundamentally the same trick she’d used before. Dense blood spears being massively accelerated at point-blank range could do a lot of damage, but they wouldn’t quite reach the brain. If she’d been able to shoot into its mouth, maybe, but with the dragon’s head having been just slammed into the ground a moment before its jaws were most likely closed.

However.

She had another spear. The one she’d been building up beside her. At the same moment she drove one blood-thorn into the dragon’s skull, she flipped the other to aim its [i]blunt[/i] end at her target, and let it fly.

Push on a nail with your hand, and likely as not it won’t go in. But hit a nail hard enough with a hammer, and you’ll drive it clean through. One spike was her nail, and the other her hammer.

[color=9e0b0f][i]EAT! THIS!!![/i][/color]

Not even a second after the first spear plunged in, the second one rammed it from behind, smashing it straight through the damaged skull and towards the dragon’s vulnerable brain.

[hider=Helpful visual of ultimate evil][img]https://i.imgur.com/bDcklPK.png[/img][/hider]

If that didn’t reach it, it was unlikely that anything Lavinia could do ever would. But Zenith and the others were still nearby. If they struck the ‘nail’ with their own attacks, they could drive deeper still. And if they had to shove her weapon all the way into the very center of its brain just to finally fucking kill this thing, then Lavinia had no doubt they’d go the distance.