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A Hero Tale {Complete}

Dacer's ears bounced and he snapped his head back up. With both hands, he performed a cross-slash with both hands, creating a grid-like attack that headed for Jeff, expanded, and stopped his miniature wind-spheres on contact with its sheer ki. Right afterwards, he spun around and held his claws up. But as the saw neared him, it split and dispersed into all directions. With his Ki-coated claws, he cut away at the incoming attacks, dispersing the saws with his fingernails as they got close, and only allowing a few to cut at the sides of his arms. The shallow cuts did little to dissuade him from cutting off Jenso's route, and immediately slashing at him with his right arm in a wide, right-to-left horizontal motion. His claws also left behind a trail of Ki, that went outwards as he slashed, creating a nearly 180 degree wave of energy that headed for Oz, Jenso, and Jeff based on the angle of his cut.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Dacer pulled at his ears lightly.

^{"Heads up"}

Dacer's ear flopped upwards and he swatted the spheres away, one after another. One struck his shoulder, pushing him back, and he narrowly dodged the last two, immediately breaking into a sprint right afterwards.

^{"Where's you bow?"}

"Right here!" Dacer shouted, suddenly holding his arm outwards. His bow didn't appear, but as he pulled back on its imaginary drawstring, a stream of brilliant energy appeared, and he fired it towards Jeff at top speeds. He pulled back again and again, firing a barrage at the inventor with no signs of stopped. "There's nothing here that I can't bear, you fucking spaz!" He shouted, suddenly pulling back a black, swirling stream of dark light. The grass at his feet began to wilt, rotting away in mere moments in a growing circle around him as he charged the dark arrow. "Let's make your face a catastrophe!" Dacer spun around, towards Oz's barrier. "First one's gonna kill your friend, here!"

^{"Don't do that."}

Dacer's left eye closed, and his shoulder gave way slightly earlier than it should've. The arrow went off-center, grazing the side of Oz's barrier and flying off into the forest behind him. As it went on, it got larger and larger, instantly killing the trees, and turning them into withered sticks that could barely stand upright over the dead grass beneath them. At the end of its path, it exploded, changing the hue of the air to a darker shade for a moment. Dacer cursed under his breath and grabbed his arm.

^{"Not enough weight on your left foot. Sloppy posture too. Go down already, you're embarrassing yourself.."}

"No! Shut up! You're in no place to lecture me old man!" Dacer shrieked to himself, grabbing his head with both hands and flailing back and fourth frantically.

A Hero Tale {Complete}

The Gaian's head snapped up, and sliced through Jeff's oncoming attacks with a series of wild slices. One cut through the oncoming cannon attack, several, more hectic, matched the oncoming scythes and disabled them.

^{"Whoa, nice moves. You're makin' me proud, kiddo."}

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Dacer screamed, reeling his right hand back, behind his head.

^{"You're near your limit."}

"You don't know shit about limits!" As Jeff fired his attack, Dacer rose his other hand backwards too, before swiping the two claws down in a forward arc. A giant white blade of ultra-refined Ki cutforwards, diving Jeff's attack down the middle, and heading straight for him with a great deal of force.

^{"This isn't you."}

"I'm better than you would have ever been!"

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Dacer crossed his arms. "Furry..? Is it because I'm covered in fur?" He pondered briefly, "Come on, Jeff. Face the music. Jenso's down for the count, your muscle-bound-bad-ass over here looks like he just took a trip through the meat grinder, and you? Well, come on, you're you." Both of the cat-man's hands lowered into his pockets. "The gap between us hasn't changed since that tree almost crushed you... Or did it almost crush the villagers? Hell," He shrugged, "I don't rightly remember! Maybe I'll ask Ra... Raj.. A..K...k-k-ka.." Dacer's speech began to stutter, and his voice shrunk to a slur. He backed away. "What. The Hell." Dacer grasped his head with both hands and closed his eyes. "What. The Hell."

^{"Your Ki's running a bit low there, 'lil Dace."}

Dacer staggered back as if he'd just been punched in the gut.

^{"You are aware that there's a hole in your chest. Right, sport?"}

"What. THE HELL."

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Dacer grit his fangs and lashed his tail sideways. The Gaian looked back over at the impact point, where Ada's ooze stood motionless, barely visible over the horizon inside of the crater that Atlas' hammer left behind. He turned back to Oz. It quickly became clear that he was in no condition to fight him. Dacer smiled, his ears shaking confidently. "More fodder," he mouthed, chuckling lightly. "Hey, muscle-head! I took down your precious golden boy," Dacer announced, loosening his stance casually. "You guys just keep lining up to die."

A Hero Tale {Complete}

~ Chapter 180 ~

_{What Now, Jenso?}

Dacer slowly stepped away from Jenso's body. It had been competently ravaged by the Royal Amp. There's no way he was getting right back up after something like that. With Jeff now solo, Dacer smiled and began to walk towards him, ignoring the pain that stung the bottoms of his feet. "Well?" Dacer grunted, "What's next? You gonna show me some new form or something? How about another gadget? Or, maybe you'll just run away like a bitch." Just then, the impact from Atlas' hammer shook the very ground. Dacer stood upright, barely shaken by the quake, but he turned to witness the explosion of purple ooze, and Oz flying towards them. "Wha..?"

A Hero Tale {Complete}

As the barrier gave way, Ada's ooze shot out in every direction, covering a considerable part of the field with a sudden tidal wave of her meta energy. Her eyes flashed, and she shot her head upwards. There it was. From a distance, the resounding crash echoed across the battlefield, strengthening the tide of Ooze that had already burst out from the pressure within the dome of Veil. The waves of goop sunk into Bruce's huge crater, filling it partway, while a large portion of the northernmost part of the battlefield was dampened, with droplets of purple liquid hanging from the grass and soaking into the soil. Oz was launched away from the point of impact, across the filling Ravine, and towards Jeff's Castle, free from her crushing embrace despite the considerable distance he covered. Ada on the other hand, went nowhere. After the explosive impact subsided, a large mound of Goo was left where she once stood, gathered up like a hill inside of the crater left behind, and sinking towards its epicentre. Ada was nowhere to be found. As far as anyone who had witnessed the impact knew, the witch was no more.

---

~ End Of Chapter 179 ~

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Ada's ooze quickly pushed Oswald away from her. A few more seconds, and his last pockets of air were officially stolen from him, with Ada breathing in her purple sludge as if it were the air itself. Her eyes, all-seeing, opened again, but there was nothing to see beyond the miniature ocean of purple ooze. It began to press him from all angles. There was no more air to breath. Soon he would be crushed under her power's natural pressure, if his dome didn't give way first. Her voice echoed one more time, in the moments before Atlas' hammer struck.

"D I E"

A Hero Tale {Complete}

"Shut up!"

Ada's platform lowered until she was finally at level with Oz, but by that time, the entire inside of his dome was coated by her ooze. The light was drowned out, leaving the two of them in absolute darkness. Ada's glowing eyes were the only thing visible at first, until, she closed those as well. A resounding explosion, something akin to a lightning storm, roared silently from outside the orb. Ada didn't acknowledge it, instead occupied by her sudden loneliness. "You don't know what we are. He loves us, we're his children. He tore us from our wretched realities and gave us immortality, the will and power to do as we please, and see to our ambitions. You are just a silly little boy, bent on destroying our happiness!" Ada's ooze began to drip from above, closing in on Oz from all directions. Droplets, tendrils, like quicksand from below... "We are his family!" Ada's goop quickly overflowed, pushing against Oz's barrier in all directions, expanding as much as it could possible manage, while also moving in on Oz directly.

"I'm going to squash you!"

A Hero Tale {Complete}

Ada stood up, eyeing the dome around them directly. She couldn't see past it, despite her visual abilities. "This is your meta energy?" She muttered to herself. Her head snapped back towards Oswald. His question went unanswered, and she clenched both her hands. "What did you do!?"

Outside of the dome, every trace of Ada's magic was erased. The clouds above, any lingering ooze, and the liquid around the dome disappeared once she'd lost connection with it. Above all else, she couldn't see what was happening beyond the veil that Oz had created.

Ada paused, and looked back down at Oz angrily. She smirked, sinking into a state she'd rarely been privy to. She was serious. "I'm claustrophobic," She wimpered, "This bubble is making me anxious. I don't like this." The ooze that had crept its way around Oswald now surrounded the entirety of the dome's rim. It began to slowly climb up the walls, like candle-wax that melted towards the sky. She eyed it, and then looked back at Oz. She hadn't felt this way in quite a long while. The dome separated her from Yzeira, somehow. She couldn't see him, or feel his presence, despite her innate ability to do so, even between the fabric of reality. The anxiety, pressure, everything about it began to creep past her exterior and into her mind. Her voice echoed inside of Oz's head now. "I don't like this feeling. I don't like it- I hate it, take it down this instant." Ada rose one hand to her mask and felt underneath her right eye with three of her fingers, gently caressing her cheekbone, longingly. "He's not- I can't feel... Take it down, now! Take it down!"