I was thrown back and hit the wall; the air in my lungs escaped.

Falling to the ground, blood was coming from my left side. I tried getting up, but everything went black.

Alex’s Party Perspective

Alice looked at Nyx and was astounded by how he fought. They were having trouble fighting it because of the vines, causing Alex or Wendy to fight the Owlbear while the other kept the vines at bay.

Maybe we can win this time. She thought that because Nyx seemed to be holding his own with the Owlbear and Alice had never seen this level of fighting before, especially for someone who was almost the same age as herself, even her personal guards would have a hard time defeating him.

However, Alice saw a vine slip through Wendy and snuck up to Nyx. She tried to warn Nyx, but he was too focused on fighting the Owlbear to notice. It grabbed onto Nyx’s leg, and she saw Nyx thrown into the air with blood splattering all over.

Alice turned to Maria and told her.

“We are retreating; get Nyx out of here.”

As she said that, Alex was also thrown back and landed next to them.

Maria checked Alex to see if he was okay, and fortunately, his armor managed to stop the Owlbear’s claws from harming him.

“Don’t worry about me; go to Nyx; he is more injured than I am.”

Standing up, Alex ran back to fight the Owlbear, while Maria ran to Nyx.

As Maria began to run to Nyx, Alice told Lucia to fire off her fireball and use her flamethrower spell to deal with the vine so they could focus on escaping.

Lucia nodded, and she notified Alex to get out of the way and to carry Nyx out.

After the Owlbear is hit by the fireball and sent flying back, Lucia casts a flamethrower spell and shouts out at Wendy to get back since she is going to incinerate the vines and the tree itself.

As Lucia fires her flamethrower spell, Maria reaches Nyx, and she sees that Nyx is bleeding profusely and has lost a lot of blood. Three big gashes were diagonally going down from Nyx’s back to his left side. Maria took out two medium-grade potions and poured the first one on Nyx’s back to stop the bleeding.

After she was done, the last two Bloodowls noticed Maria separated from Chelsie, Alice, and Lucia and decided to dive on her. Seeing them, Maria instinctively shields Nyx’s unconscious body to try to protect him with her own body, while Chelsie fires her arrows and knocks them out of the air.

Maria sighed in relief seeing that Chelsie shot down the Bloodowls and was about to carry Nyx; without warning, vines started moving from the wall, got a hold of Maria, and pulled her to the wall, strangling her.

Seeing what was happening, Alice was dumbfounded and thought to herself, How was this happening? She didn’t expect that to happen, and the book Maria gave her to read to formulate a plan, the Dradevow dungeon book, never said anything about what was happening.

Is it because we burn down the tree at the center?

Alice ignored that train of thought and decided to act. Looking at Chelsie, since there were no Bloodowls in the air, Alice told her to follow her to help Maria, who was struggling to break free of the vines.

They ran to her, trying to cut the vine apart to free Maria; however, the vines were much more troublesome than they thought.

They were overwhelmed, and the vine had already gotten a hold of them. Vines had wrapped around their necks, and Alice thought to herself, How had things gone so wrong so quickly?

The last thing she could see and hear as she faded into black was laughter and Nyx standing up as blood was coming out and staining his clothes.

Nyx’s Perspective

I lay on the ground, and I felt a searing pain going from my back down to my left side; it was like being slashed by 3 blades all at once, which wasn’t off the mark.

How long have I been knocked out?

Trying to get up, I felt a warm, viscous liquid around me. I realized it was a pool of my own blood.

Everything hurts, but how long had I had this feeling? I haven't felt this level of pain since I fought the direwolf. good…

Tasting the blood in my mouth, I began to laugh.

“Heh heh, heh heh ahhh ahahahahahah ahhh!”

Focusing myself to stand back up on my feet, I took out a mid-grade health potion Maria gave me, uncorked the bottle with my teeth, then splashed it on my open wounds and drank the rest, ignoring how bad it tasted.

Immediately, the wound started healing and started closing.

My senses sharpened, and my mind worked overtime to see what was happening; the world felt like things had slowed down.

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Vines were strangling Alice, Chelsie, and Maria, which was strange because they usually stem from the tree but they were coming from the walls.

I looked at the tree at the center of the boss room, and it was completely burned down. Maybe it’s because of that, that if you do certain actions, it would make the boss fight either harder or easier.

Finally, I looked at everyone else, Alex and Wendy, who were desperately fighting the Owlbear, while Lucia seemed to be running out of mana because her hair was not glowing as much as before.

We both look at each other; she looks completely shocked. Maybe it’s because I managed to stand up with the grievous wounds I received that were still healing or that I was actually smiling and laughing, different from my normal self.

Either way, it did not matter because I gripped my sword tightly and began moving. My injury hadn’t finished closing yet, and it hurt like hell, but I was just laughing and enjoying the situation I was in.

This is a fun day. Alice should ask me to help them out more often.

Swinging my sword at the vines, strangling Maria, Chelsie, and Alice to cut them loose, I turned my attention to the Owlbear and ran straight to it, laughing with a smile.

Alex and Wendy noticed and immediately backed off the Owlbear, which I thought was considerate of them to let me have all the fun, but it looked like they were scared of something much bigger coming toward them.

The Owlbear swung at me with its claws, but I could see it as everything seemed to slow down for me, enough for me to do a counterattack without relying on sheer instincts and intuition.

Blood started coming out of my wound, which did not finish healing, but I did not care, just smiling and laughing in glee.

I took out one of my engraved knives and stabbed it into its right paw. There was a large spark of lightning, causing it to have muscle spasms throughout its body.

Heh heh heh, so this thing can be affected by my engraved knives.

Barely able to control its body, I took out all of my spikes and threw them at the Owlbear, aiming at the eyes because it was the only place I could do any significant damage to since these spikes would not do anything to it with its fur.

After hitting its left eye and the engraved knife was done sparking, it grew enraged, and I smiled even bigger seeing it that enraged. Yes, yes, get even angrier; all the more fun for me.

It attacks with a flurry of swings from its claws and occasional bites with its beak.

I was laughing, even more excited and riled up as I counter-attacked whenever I could; each attack was deadly, speaking from personal experience from just getting hit by it. The rush of adrenaline, my body screaming in pain, and having margin for error made it exactly the reason why I am loving this right now.

However, vines started to make their move and were beginning to slither their way to me and began to interfere in our fight.

The vines prove to be a nuisance as they sneakily move their way behind me. I took out my short sword to cut them down without looking back, while I simultaneously swung at the Owlbear with my primary sword. Don’t think I would fall for the same trick twice.

I could barely cut through its fur or feathers, which just gave it a shallow cut; I guess I had to kill it with death by a thousand cuts.

“Haaahaaa Haaahaaahaa ahhhaaaa!”

Alex’s Party Perspective

Lucia was on her knees from draining most of her mana, holding her staff to support herself. She bit her lips as things turned for the worse; half of their party had been knocked out, and she could barely do anything right now.

Taking a mana potion from one of her pouches, she downed it as fast as she could to regain her mana. She was about to fire another fireball or two to keep the Owlbear and vines at bay to let Alex and Wendy get all the wounded out.

However, as she was about to cast a fireball as fast as she could, she heard laughter. Lucia looked around the room to see who would be laughing in a situation like this.

Eventually, her eyes landed on Nyx, who was lying in a pool of his own blood. She was surprised when Nyx stood back up despite his grievous injuries. Taking a health potion and using it, Lucia saw Nyx had a smile.

He looked around, and his eyes eventually landed on Lucia. His eyes filled with madness, and his expression, which was always expressionless, was smiling for the first time. Lucia felt chills seeing the sight.

Without a moment's delay, Nyx freed Maria, Chelsie, and Alice from the vine, then ran straight for the Owlbear.

Seeing Nyx, Alex and Wendy disengaged and left Nyx to fight the Owlbear on his own. Then they ran to Maria, Chelsie, and Alice to pick them up and move them to Lucia, who was by the entrance.

Astonishing Lucia, she asked why they were not helping. Alex said with a terrified tone.

“We don’t need to, and we can’t.”

“What do you mean we can’t?”

“Nyx is in that state again; he might attack you if you get in his way, and I don’t want that to happen again. Just watching him is already terrifying enough.”

Lucia looked at Nyx again, who had used one of his artifacts that emitted a large amount of lightning and was actually fighting evenly with the Owlbear, if not pushing it back.

It gave a shiver to Lucia again seeing it—how Nyx, who always has an expressionless face and tone, now was smiling and laughing. It was something she had never seen before, and she felt fear creep through her mind.

“You know how we told you never to fight with Nyx? This is why, believe me.”

Sweat drips from her forehead, and the implication of her challenging Nyx to a duel makes her second-guess her previous bursts of emotions.

“Heh heh… right…”

Nyx’s Perspective

“Ahhha hahahah!”

It's good to feel this way after a while; it's fun that I get to let loose during a life-or-death fight.

I move out of the way as it continues to swipe its really sharp claws at me; however, I cut its arms with countless shallow cuts so that it can barely move or control its arms, just flailing them around like a wipe of some kind.

It now relied mainly on its beak to attack, but I dodged that too, and I smiled even bigger; it gave me an idea.

Whipping its arms, I dodge, and it then chooses to use its beak to try to chomp down on me.

Lunging at me, I jumped back and took out one of my engraved knives, as I used my short sword to cut down the vines coming at me.

I threw it at the Owlbear’s mouth, then I thrust the tip of my short sword at the end of the knife into its mouth to make sure the knife was lodged and stuck inside.

As it bit into my short sword and swallowed the engraved knife during its lunge, I let go of my short sword that was stuck in its mouth, threw away my main sword, and took out my last 2 engraved knives to bury them in its other eye to make sure it was dead.

A large amount of electricity came out of the knives, causing the Owlbear to spasm.

Once the electricity had settled down, the Owlbear was still standing with all the cuts, burns, and internal damage it had taken all over its body.

I was about to take out two of my normal throwing knives and ready myself to fight it if I needed to while cackling because this boss was really something and even more fun if I fought it alone.

But after a bit of waiting for it to move, it swayed back and forth and fell face-first to the ground.