"Alright Ugly," Astra said as she tapped on the belt and the orb floated to her side again, "let's see what you can do."
Roar!
The Eclipsed let out a loud roar that shook the air itself. Nox felt his skin crawl even though he wasn't the one standing in front of the creature.
Its tendrils wiggled around, landing on the ground and kicking up quite a bit of dust.
But none of that phased Astra in the slightest. She just stood there, waiting for the creature to complete its theatrics.
"I know its just showing off at this point," she said to herself, "but we gotta let it have its moment."
The creature finally stopped roaring and turned towards its challenger.
Astra tilted her head, meeting the beast's eyeless face with an unimpressed stare. "You done?"
The Eclipsed responded by slamming one of its massive tendrils into the ground, sending a shockwave in all directions.
"Let's get started then," with her words, the orb floating by her side split into two smaller ones.
The sole of her boots slowly powered up, releasing a golden glow as Astra waited for the beast to make the first move.
And it soon did.
In the blink of an eye, the Eclipsed closed the distance between them, its claws outstretched and aiming to tear her to two.
Nox, watching the scene tensed up, it wasn't like he was worried about a lady he just met, no.
But if anything happened to her, he knew the creature wouldn't just turn around and leave, it'd come for him next.
And there was no way he would be able to fight or even escape from that thing, so his only hope at survival was Astra winning.
The massive claws inched closer and closer to her, but moments before it hit —
BOOM!
The golden glow beneath her boots got brighter, before it suddenly propelled her forward faster than his eyes could register. One moment she was standing there; the next, she was gone.
The Eclipsed's claws struck the ground where she had been, splitting the earth open in a massive crater.
But Astra was already above it, spinning midair, her right hand gripping one of the hovering orbs as it reshaped into a long, spear.
"Spear."
She muttered, before descending downwards at impossible speeds, thanks to the boost from her boots.
The creature, noticing that its target was above it, attacked with its tendrils. For any normal human, that would've been the end since humans only had limited evasion ability while in mid air.
But the same was untrue for a solar knight, especially one at a higher rank... Like Astra.
Seeing the incoming tendrils, she made no effort to dodge, her spear still pointing forward.
Nox held his breath as he watched the scene, unbeknownst to him, his golden eyes had taken on a slight glow, causing him to see the fight in eerie detail.
It almost felt like the appendages had slowed down a bit, but he was too focused to realize.
With a smile on her face, the other orb by Astra's side reformed itself into what looked like a circular blade.
The weapon spun around her in a perfect circle just as the tendrils reached her. The moment they made contact—
SHRRRING!
They were severed cleanly. The glowing blade carved through the incoming appendages like knife through butter.
The cuts were so precise that the creature didn't even realize it had lost half of them until its blood sprayed into the air a moment later.
The severed limbs rained from above, immediately disintegrating to ash as they touched the ground.
The Eclipsed shrieked, its body convulsing from the loss of its limbs, but Astra didn't give it the chance to recover.
She tightened her grip on her spear, before hurling it down with devastating force.
The spear cleanly went through the Eclipsed, coming out on the other end. After the attack, the spear took the form of an orb again before returning to Astra's, who had smoothly landed, side.
And the Eclipsed?
It let out a roar of pain before falling to the ground where stayed unmoving for a while, almost as if it was dead but Nox noticed the twitch in its form.
That's when it stood back up and turned towards her and let out an angry roar, its roar was accompanied by a faint black aura where the wound was. The flesh around it began to bubble and reform, knitting itself back together.
"Right," Astra said as she watched the Eclipsed heal. "I guess healing 's the norm now."
The Eclipsed lowered then itself, its newly regenerated tendrils burrowing into the earth. For a brief moment, nothing seemed to be happening. Then — dozens of black spikes shot upward, impaling everything in a wide radius.
Astra disappeared again, reappearing on top of one of the spikes midair.
"Ah, I see," She nodded her head in understanding, "you're a tier 3 that can harness its umbral energy."
Like humans had Solar Energy, the Eclipsed also had something of their own — Umbral Energy.
One that upped their danger from one to a hundred. Not every Eclipsed could use that energy but the ones that could were a lot more dangerous than their ranks would suggest.
Umbra Energy basically put them a rank higher than what they were officially classified as.
A Tier 3 that could use it effectively? That was practically a Tier 4 — a level of destruction that could level an entire kingdom if left unchecked.
And the one in front of Astra had just proven it could wield that corruption consciously...which meant it wasn't a normal one.
"Of course its not a normal one," she said to the voices. "With our luck, its impossible to ever meet anything normal."
"Alright then," Astra muttered, "let's end it quickly before more of these freaks are attracted to the Solar and Umbral energies hanging in the air."
She kicked off spikes, landing lightly on the creature's head.
The Eclipsed tried shaking her off, thrashing violently as its tendrils whipped and lashed in every direction, but it was useless.
Astra didn't budge, her boots clinging pretty well to the creature.
Stay still," she said with a chuckle , "my hands aren't exactly steady today."
The two orbs switched form again, becoming two sun shaped rings before aligning over each other and started spinning.
Nox, watching from the jeep, felt the pressure pressing down on his chest. The sheer power radiating from Astra made it hard to breathe.
The creature, sensing the impending danger, roared furiously, its tendrils stabbing at itself in a frantic attempt to hit the woman perched on its head.
But each strike stopped inches short — vaporized by the sheer heat pouring off the glowing rings.
"Let's see if you can heal from this," Astra said, with that she hopped away and before the creature had the chance to try and escape, a golden ray of heat descended from the rings, washing over it.
Visible waves, caused by the heat, appeared in the air as the blast continued. The creature screamed in pain as it thrashed around but nothing helped.
The ground below it, completely melted due to the heat and soon enough, it also succumbed to the attack.
When the attack finally receded, Astra stood atop what remained of the Eclipsed, brushing a bit of dust off her shoulder as if she had just finished a mild workout.
"See," she said, glancing at the dissolving corpse, "That gave you a better look after all."
Then she turned toward the jeep, raising an eyebrow when she saw Nox staring wide-eyed at her through the window.
"What?" she asked, hands on her hips. "You expected less?"