Aldrich watched from high above from his position high above like a domineering lord as his units attacked Shrimp one by one, spacing out their attacks so that Shrimp never had a single moment of rest in his pit of quicksand.
The Antlion could not actually deal damage to Shrimp with its jaws, but its sand and anti-flight field were extremely useful in grounding Shrimp's mobility, leaving him an open target for Aldrich's units to strategically pick apart.
The Deathwheel would roll in, forcing Shrimp to block, but before Shrimp could smash the Deathwheel with his prodigious strength, Valera would come in from the back with a blow.
Shrimp would have to block that attack, but as he did so, the Deathwheel would be ready to attack again, rolling towards Shrimp's exposed back, taking a free hit.
After two of these exchanges where Shrimp ate one of Valera's punches to his stomach and another high impact grinding wheel spin from the Deathwheel at his back, the Locus adapted.
"ORA!" Valera sprinted at blinding speed towards Shrimp and unleashed an intense flurry of punches. Her dozens of punches visually blurred together in a wall of fists converging down on Shrimp.
This was [Hundredfold Flurry], a powerful fist based skill that unleashed a mass barrage of punches all at the same time on a single target for massive burst damage.
Meanwhile, the Deathwheel circled towards Shrimp's back, ready to swoop in if Shrimp dodged or blocked.
Shrimp used his high speed energy fueled movement, which Aldrich dubbed as Burst. A bright crackling aura of blue-green formed around his body.
Valera's black and red eyes narrowed as she readied to strike behind her at any moment, for that was where Shrimp could go to break himself out of this tight position between Valera and the Deathwheel where he always faced an attack from his blindside.
Instead, Shrimp used Burst to dodge Valera's countless blows. He moved in extreme speed in flashes of bright light.
Afterimages illuminated from the light of his aura tracked his movements, and they formed a dizzying pattern of complex weaves and bobs and dodges as he dodged all of Valera's high speed punch flurry.
At Valera's very last punch, Shrimp evaded very narrowly off to the side. Valera's gauntleted fist scraped by Shrimp's head, screeching out sparks with how close the impact was.
This was intentional.
Aldrich saw what was going to happen and clapped his hands, commanding his next contingency to come in.
By dodging Valera's attacks at the very last moment, Shrimp prevented the Deathwheel from rolling in lest it interfere with Valera or, worse, get hit by her. But this was far easier theorized than done.
To actually get the timing of Valera's incredibly powerful and fast punches, a massive flurry of them, no less, down to such expert timing required absurd reflexes that Shrimp had not possessed before.
Aldrich hypothesized that Shrimp's Burst affected not only his physical movements, but also his brain processes and reflexes.
This let Shrimp dash to the side, past Valera, in the last remaining tick of his Burst without getting assaulted by the Deathwheel.
His energy aura faded down as the ground beneath his feet smoked from his high-speed movement, but even with his Burst gone, he had achieved what he had wanted: getting behind past both Valera and the Deathwheel so that they could not gang up on him.
But if there was anyone else in this battle that knew anything about perfect timings, then it was Aldrich.
No sooner had Shrimp managed to get out than did his antennae twitch as he looked up in the air.
Before Shrimp could even think about moving to run away to get some distance, a red flash crashed in from above.
Shrimp raised his arms up, blocking the Crimson Knight Chiros from cutting down at Shrimp's neck with his Bloodstone Saber.
"More?" Shrimp said, annoyance palpable in his eerily human voice.
"Is that disappointment I hear?" said Chiros as he pushed down on his saber, using it to vault over Shrimp's head and stand behind the sea variant. "Then I simply must put on a better performance, for I am never known to disappoint!"
Chiros put on a flashy smile, his red eyes glowing under his visor-helmet. He had been thrown here by the Zombie Giant, for the giant was too large and slow to be a good asset in a fight like this.
Instead, the giant acted like a mobile form of unit transportation, tossing key units over when Aldrich commanded it to.
Chiros dashed in and unleashed a series of three spinning slashes while two handing his saber, giving himself maximal rotational power meant for breaking through tough, armored enemies.
This was [Blade Waltz: Step 3], an incredibly powerful and fast attack meant to both break through tough enemy defense or force enemies backwards.
The Blade Dancer combat art that Chiros specialized in was, as the name suggest, much more of a dance.
It had set, pre-choreographed forms that, in exchange for being predictable, were quite fast and deadly, and higher leveled Blade Dancers could change different steps and forms together to create devastating combo attacks and less predictable switchups.
Shrimp blocked Chiros's first two heavy slashes with the thick plating around his arms and then ducked under the third slash before unleashing a quick, normal punch into Chiros's chest.
A boom of impact echoed as Chiros flew backwards from the blow, but he flipped in the air and righted himself on his feet. Blood pooled from his mouth as he took in a deep breath.
"My, you are quite a powerful one, yes. No wonder even the Exile struggled with your ilk," said Chiros.
Shrimp's antennae twitched as it whirled around again just in time to meet Valera's punch aimed at his head.
Shrimp caught the punch in his own hand, but before he could return a punch of his own, Chiros was at Shrimp's back.
Chiros flipped in the air before unleashing a strong downward slash with both hands. His Bloodstone Saber rippled and glowed with blood harvested from the countless corpses on this battlefield, extending the range, sharpness, and strength of the blade considerably.
The blade dug into Shrimp's neck, noticeably where a crack was, and he managed to ever so slightly cut the flesh beneath.
Little splotches of flower-patterned purple began to spread around the flesh, shining visibly through Shrimp's shell.
Chiros's signature racial vampiric skill, one unique only to his bloodline, the [Crystal Blood Venom], had now infiltrated Shrimp's flesh. If enough of that built up, Chiros could instantly kill Shrimp like he had done with Shark, but he could not cut nearly deep enough to apply much venom.
"So...many," Shrimp grunted in exertion as he tried to block Valera's punches while Chiros continued to try and saw his way through Shrimp's shell with the whirling blood layer surrounding his saber.
Shrimp whirled powerfully around all of a sudden, trying to swipe at Chiros, but Chiros flipped back and evaded the attack. In that instant, Valera smashed down at Shrimp's head with a double hammer fist, immediately nailing Shrimp down into the ground with a cratering impact.
Shrimp pancaked into the earth with deep cracks in the back of his head.
Valera raised her foot up to stomp it down on Shrimp, but Shrimp rolled over rapidly, causing her to miss and instead cause cracks to rumble across the ground around her foot.
"Get away…need to get away," said Shrimp as he looked up with blue blood pooling down his shell helmet, only to see the Deathwheel ramming into his face, sending him flying backwards where Valera punched him again with a full force lariat, causing Shrimp to pancake down into the earth again.
"Get off!" Shrimp roared as he surged up with bestial strength with his fists out to his side, his Burst coming back online as his energy aura flashed explosively around him, blasting and melting the rock in his vicinity.
Valera and Chiros were both pushed back by the sudden energy influx, but this was temporary.
Almost as soon as that energy burst flashed out, it died down – Shrimp had used his Burst too soon after his last one, giving him too little time to build up energy.
Now with his energy levels subsiding, the aura around him fading, Shrimp was helpless to another onslaught.
Valera punched him, and Shrimp put up a guard to absorb the blow. However, her punch was so strong that Shrimp skidded backwards, and from behind, Chiros swept his blade under Shrimp's foot, sending him back on the ground again.
The Deathwheel rolled over Shrimp to give time for Valera to close the distance and start stomping like mad down on Shrimp body.
Meanwhile, Chiros slashed down in between Valera's attacks.
All Shrimp could do at this point was put his shelled arms around his head and curl up in a ball as he got relentlessly beatdown.
This looked straight out of a scene from a street fight where an unlucky victim just got stomped and trampled over by multiple people helplessly, and just like in those situations, it was only a matter of time before Shrimp cracked and this fight was over.
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