Transmigrated as a Ghost

The sense of unease that had been going around the expedition squad after watching Marcus get consumed by The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent's attack quickly vanished once he reappeared next to Mrazivý.

This was not the first time that they had seen him do this disappearing act, though only Evette knew exactly how he was able to pull it off. Everyone else could only guess and had decided to allow Marcus his privacy no matter how curious they were. All of them had secrets as well after all.

With renewed fervor, everyone began attacking the Tower of Heaven's guardian that they had slowly but surely whittled down.

'I should meet back up with Thegia and continue with our strategy. It will not be long before my Thunderous Molten Colossus has burnt the black mamba head to a crisp and I will want its illusory doubles back by the time it is finished.' 

However, as Marcus turned to head back towards where Thegia was, The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent made an unexpected move.

Its main head did not hesitate to bite into the base of the neck of the black mamba and rip it out. The powerful beast could already tell that attempting to heal its already severely injured head was not worth the energy and decided to consume it instead.

Marcus was caught off guard by this and before he even realized it the central head was disregarding the damage it was taking and had begun eating his Colossus as well.

"Get away from it!" Marcus ordered.

Immediately the gigantic golem did its best to break free from the golden king cobra head that was devouring it along with the head of the black mamba, but it did not get away for free.

Most of its right side had been broken off and it collapsed onto the ground with an earthshaking crash.

An instant later, The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent's tail whipped forward and smashed into the Thunderous Molten Colossus and scattered its liquid body.

During this time the massive and powerful mythic grade beast had ignored every other attack coming its way and focused entirely on eliminating what it considered to be the most annoying enemy.

Once it had finished destroying Marcus' creation, it coiled its body back up and started glowing brightly. Its body quickly bulged, and the outer scales peeled away and left behind a colossal snakeskin.

"I was wondering when it would use that ability." Mrazivý said, wearing a grim look.

The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent emerged from its shed skin without a single wound on its body. After all the damage that had been done to it, in one move it had made a full recovery.

At the very least the guardian had not regrown any of its missing heads, and still only had the golden king cobra head and sea snake head remining. Though the central head still retained all of the powers it had obtained from cannibalizing tis already destroyed heads.

'It can only use that power once a day. Now we only need to worry about destroying its last subordinate head and then finishing it off. We can still do this.' Evette said over telepathy.

Thanks to that no one lost heart after seeing their progress erased. Nevertheless, it was going to be easier said than done to truly bring down such a high-level mythic grade beast.

Once it had finished its recovery, it turned both of its heads towards Mrazivý and locked onto her. During this battle, other than Marcus' Thunderous Molten Colossus she had been the most dangerous opponent it had to deal with. Every time she launched one of her attacks powered by her Supreme Skill, she caused it a great deal of pain and it had decided to get rid of her.

Without any consideration for the multitude of other people attacking it, The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent focused all of its offensive capabilities on Mrazivý and began chasing after her with its entire gargantuan body. It had already found success in disregarding everything else in order to destroy Marcus' gigantic golem that had given it so much grief and planned to use the same strategy to get rid of Mrazivý. From this point on it would simply go after the biggest threat first and not stop until it had eliminated them.

"Marcus, where are you going?!" Mrazivý cried out frantically as she avoided and blocked flying scales and blasts of energy that were perpetually coming at her.

"I mean, it is clearly after you, and if I stay here with you, I won't be able to accomplish much if I have to protect myself as well. So, sorry, but good luck. I'll make sure to do something about it soon. Just keep its attention for a bit longer while I come up with something." Marcus said before turning into a beam of light and flying away.

Of course, he knew that Mrazivý could handle herself, or he never would have left her alone. He figured that if she focused fully on defense, she could hold out for at least a few minutes.

Once he had gotten farther away from the enormous beast, he was able to see the full battlefield much better.

'I see, so that is what it is doing.'

Other than attacking Mrazivý with its full force, The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent was only nothing to block attacks aimed at its final remaining subordinate head.

It would constantly move its central head in the way of attacks and deflect them with its nearly impenetrable barrier. And for anything aimed at its torso, it simply allowed its tough and beefy body to soak up the damage.

The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent was fighting completely differently from during the start of the battle. No longer was it allowing ever single person to take up its attention, and it instead focused solely on killing one individual at a time.

For a few seconds Marcus considered conjuring another Thunderous Molten Colossus, but he was certain it would take a lot out of him, and he was not sure it would be nearly as effective as before. Since the Tower of Heaven's guardian was no longer attacking everyone with wild abandon, a giant creature to soak up its attacks would not be nearly as useful.

'Without a doubt it is learning how to fight the longer we continue. At this rate, we may not be able to beat it.' 

While everyone was still going strong, in large part to Evette's healing, it was only matter of time before people started reaching their limits. When that happened the only thing that awaited them was a death spiral that could not be stopped.

Unfortunately, things were not looking good. The Celestial Seven-Headed Serpent was doing everything it could to protect its last subordinate head and doing damage to its main body was not having much of an impact. 

To defeat the tower's guardian, the only feasible method was to destroy all of its heads, but realistically it was nearly impossible to do enough damage to the sea snake head now that the central head only had to worry about protecting it.

'It will a huge risk, but I don't see any other way we are going to win this.'

Having made up his mind, Marcus opened his item box and pulled out a secret weapon he had not expected to need to use.