“There’s something ahead,” Luna whispered, while Silva let out an angry, menacing growl, her temper still going strong, despite the many hours of combat and the, quite literally, countless critters we had destroyed during them. By now, I even gained another level, bringing me to eighty-seven, and multiple of my magical skills had levelled. Ice Magic, Blood Magic, Blood Rune Mastery, Water Magic, Wind Magic, Fire Magic and even Lightning Magic, they all had gone up by a point or two, even three in the case of Lightning Magic, as those skills were the ones I used to destroy groups of sudden enemies or heal my allies after the battle was done.

The battles had all been against swarms of foes and for that kind of enemy, I didn’t even try to work with precision strikes. Instead, clouds of freezing mist, burning winds or water sizzling with electricity were the weapon of choice, destroying the biggest number of foes for the least expenditure of Astral Power. Efficiency, but in a different manner. Sadly, I hadn’t been able to utilise Runes for most of it, partially because I lacked those runes and the enemies appeared with the same, annoying suddenness that had annoyed me since the first encounter. While I was able to form my runes fast, I needed a second or five, depending on the complexity and number of the runes, and that was time I just didn’t have in this sort of fight. So, simple, magical manipulation it was, literally willing the elements to do my bidding, costing me quite a bit of Astral Power in the process. Luckily, it didn’t look like anything would happen to us in the dungeon if we stopped, so we were able to take quite a few breaks for rest and recovery, leaving us in fair overall shape.

Now, with Luna’s declaration and Silva’s continued fury warning us, we moved around yet another bend in the single, impossibly long, winding cave and for a moment, I was stunned by what I saw. The first thing that inevitably came to my attention was the massive, slightly grotesque form moving in the back of the open area we were looking at. Despite its grotesque nature, I took a moment to look around the area to see if there was anything else nearby but no, only the usual fungi, flowers and other weird plants, in addition to that monstrous creature. And, maybe just as important as the monster, there were no further paths, only the huge, vaguely circular room we were now in, leading me to the conclusion that we were looking at the end boss of the dungeon.

And what a boss it was, its body a strange mixture between a serpent, maybe a crocodile and possibly a hippopotamus, it was massively long, with fairly stubby legs that shouldn’t be able to support its mass, especially not with the distance between them. To make matters worse, at the front, where a crocodile would have its maw, the thing arched upwards, like some sort of strange centaur, and formed a roughly humanoid body. Only, the body looked like somebody had heard what a human might look like, gone on a massive bender to get utterly drunk, and started painting while still hungover and confused, leading to an appearance that only a mother’s blindness could love. Pale, saggy skin that was partially covered in black fur where the rest of the body was covered in mottled grey scales and arms that hung down so far its elbows were around the place where its hips would be, a wide, almost frog-like mouth and a set of four sizable eyes, two where the eyes would normally be and two set in its cheeks, all four gleaming with palpable malevolence.

As we entered the room, which was still about a hundred meters away from the monster, the battle began. To our surprise, it wasn't us who started it, but the monster itself. It gathered energy into its long arms and placed them on its underbelly, behind the front legs. The energy lit up its scales before forming an egg-shaped object, which fell to the ground and shattered. Two snakes emerged from the broken shell and started slithering towards us. As they moved, they grew rapidly and turned into creatures twice as tall as I was. However, they stopped growing halfway across the cave and Lia took care of them while Silva aimed for the monster. We all moved towards the middle of the cave, spreading out to avoid any potential area-of-effect attacks from the monster.

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Once I was in range to Observe the thing, I did and received yet another fascinating result. While the monster was called Broodmother, it didn’t have a defined level, making me wonder just how that worked. Maybe another scaling mechanism, like I suspected the entire dungeon had been formed around? It was possible but without any additional information, impossible to find out.

Not that it truly mattered, at the end of the day, its level only changed the rewards at the end or the danger we were in if we had to retreat. Thanks to looking at it with my Magical Sight, I could easily tell that it was magically powerful, its Astral Power reserves were comparable to mine, which was incredible. I had multiple traits that increased my Astral Power, in addition to a massive amount of Intelligence and Insight, and yet, when it came to raw power, the thing could match me. Even its elemental versatility was impressive, I could easily identify the four primary elements, Fire, Water, Earth and Wind in the monster’s elemental composition and the overpowering influence of Life, alongside a few minor elements. Curiously there didn’t seem to be Nature Magic, at least from what I could tell, but that might just be a coincidence.

Truly a boss, though I could also see why it needed such incredible amounts of power. The snakes it had created were magical constructs, conjured just like I could conjure spikes of Ice or orbs of Fire but where my creations were elementally fairly simple, these were anything but. They appeared to be fully functioning living beings, though I’d have to check if they had a soul. Even on Mundus, with the power of the Nexus, I had only been able to create a semblance of Life, shells for the restless spirits to inhabit or for me to puppet, nothing like this. Granted, back then, I didn’t have the necessary magical elements but even so, it was impressive.

To further test the situation, I initiated a few probing attacks with Icicles, while Luna assisted Lia in dealing with the snakes. Although my attacks had little effect, Silva managed to approach the beast and distract it so we could attack it. However, the creature was quite agile and used its four legs to spin rapidly, while its tail moved like a whip, forcing Silva back. I attempted to attack it with different elements, but nothing seemed to work effectively.

Suddenly, the creature emitted another burst of energy and another egg fell and shattered, releasing a few tiny rats. Unfortunately, these rats grew as quickly as the snakes, and Silva could only squash one of them before they ran away. We needed to keep the number of enemies down, but Lia and Luna were preoccupied with the snakes. Therefore, I used my Frozen Shuttles to hunt down and dispatch the rats.

This set the tone of the battle - the Broodmother's primary ability was to continually create these creatures, and they became more dangerous as time went on. If we didn't destroy them quickly, they would gain elemental abilities, which we did not want to deal with. So, while Silva focused on the boss, the rest of us hunted down the creatures as quickly as possible. Sometimes, Alex managed to take out the entire brood with an alchemical grenade, while I could dispatch them before they grew to size.

Overall, the battle was a long and arduous slog, much like the entire dungeon. Luckily, there also wasn’t anything overly special going on, just a lot of death and destruction, until Silva managed to carve her way through the monster’s regenerating hide and into its soft organs. Once that was done, the battle didn’t last very long, while the thing had monstrous endurance and vitality, the moment Silva demonstrated that the fastest way to the heart was to go through the stomach, the battle was over, leaving all of us sweaty, tired and covered in blood. Luckily, most of that blood didn’t come from us, but from the various monsters but still, it wasn’t pleasant.

But at least the rewards were nice. I gained enough EXP to push me up yet another level and there were a few interesting items on the ground after the Broodmother turned into black sludge and was absorbed by the dungeon, amongst them a short sword and a bracelet that we’d have to take a closer look at, later.

Now, we only had to walk the entire way back out…