I awoke invigorated. In barely fifteen minutes, I had acquired another chitin ward and installed an agate into it. Then it was a simple matter to engage a hemogris biter and sit behind my new shield to see what it did.
The biter attacked, and the moment its claws contacted the shield, the agate flared, and a burst of frost knocked the creature back. I burst out laughing as the confused creature reoriented and resumed its attack. I danced with the creature for a bit before it suddenly stiffened and died.
Inefficient, Thrun said quietly. Worth using against low attack monsters.
I hummed quietly, acknowledging Thrun, as I went to switch shields. I’d need to remember to use an agate shield when grinding enemies that couldn’t kill me. I wasn’t planning on killing any of those right now, though. Iroth Grimskull was my next target.
I sprinted through the lower floors of the hemogris fort with barely any opposition. Only the hemogris ravagers were high enough level to be aggressive, and even they barely slowed me down. I reached the ladder leading up to Iroth’s domain and poked my head through.
As usual, Iroth Grimskull was sitting on his throne, and nothing apparent had changed about the arena. The skeleton-filled cages still hung from rattling chains, and the walls were still made of plated bone. The only thing that had changed was Iroth’s status:
A slow smile spread over my face. At level 100 it was nearly twice my level, but instead of fear or trepidation. All I felt was excitement for what was to come.
You are insane, Thrun said. Depending on its stat distribution, it could one-shot us.
“No way to know except to check, right?” I said, hopping up the ladder and lighting a charwood campfire.
Recovery:71/59
Iroth stood as he normally did from his throne and began summoning his thralls. I raced to engage, throwing my daggers but finding the thralls significantly harder to take down. A single dagger wasn’t enough to kill them like it used to. In fact, the thralls were even tankier than the moss giants in the ancient dungeon.
I pivoted, sprinting around the edge of the chamber, dodging bone missiles and leading the thralls away from their summoner. By the time I made it back around, the thralls were far behind me and I had several solid seconds to unleash on the boss.
He sneered at me as my attacks glanced off his skin like it was made of marble. I ignored him, blasting him in the face with smoke, shadow and ice strikes. The weakening magic sunk into his skin, and my next strike bit deeper and wiped his sneer from his face.
The thralls jumped me from behind, and I staggered under their combined assault. My health began to dip, and I was about to turn to handle them when Thrun’s cool voice thrummed through my thoughts.
Ignore them and eat. You can outheal them.
I did just that, popping a honeycrisp and savoring the sweet juices as I attacked the boss. The melee continued, with me struggling to stand as Iroth and his minions pummeled me from all sides. I stood my ground, hacking at the boss like he was an iron ore vein.
Whenever my health dipped, I took a bite out of a honeycrisp, which healed more than half my health. Damage flooded in, but food kept me healthy. There was nothing the boss or his minions could do. Even with its absurd combat level, it simply didn’t deal enough damage to knock me out.
Iroth tried to escape, but I simply blasted him at range with blood strike. He summoned more thralls in response, and I was forced to turn away and deal with them before they completely overwhelmed me.
After what seemed like forever, I hacked at Iroth, and the distinctive red glow pulsed around him. I jumped backward but missed the timing by a hair. The red nova slammed the air from my lungs and launched me and the rest of the thralls against the far wall.
“Bloody hell,” I groaned, rolling to my feet. “Level 100 is no joke. That took forever.”
False. That took eight minutes and twenty-one seconds. However, you are correct that this boss has most of its stats in defense.
“Great,” I grunted as the bone behemoth formed above the necromancer. It had been a while since I’d fought the thing, and it seemed larger and...spikier than I remembered.
At the current rate, you are consuming 34 honeycrisps an hour. If you do not finish this phase in the next ten minutes, you will run out of food for this run.
The behemoth roared, and I jumped back into combat. Thrun spoke nonstop in the back of my head. Making sure I was focused on the right things and pointing out opportunities. His voice was like a cool winter wind. Refreshing and reinvigorating in equal measure.
I fell into a zen state as I dodged between the giant behemoth’s thick legs. The endless tempo of the chitin ward’s moonstone ticked in my skull as I deflected bone projectiles and vertebrae slams. I failed to block the boss's inconsistent projectiles as often as I succeeded, but it would just have to be enough.
Before I knew it, Iroth had summoned his bone cage to hide within, and I had broken it open like an egg. The behemoth developed cracks with each of my attacks as I ensured that I was dealing equal damage to the dual boss.
Then I ran out of food.
Hold! Another minute!
I kept fighting, doubling my effort to dodge attacks, even to the detriment of my damage. I lost track of how much damage I’d done to each of the monsters, lost too deep in my own combat zen to focus on such trivialities. Thrun reminded me. He was my anchor. My touchstone. I barely registered his commands, but I still let them guide me. My health dipped to single digits, and finally. Finally. I heard the fateful command.
Now, kill them both.
My steel blade ripped through the behemoth, and then I spun and stabbed out at Iroth Grimskull in one smooth motion. Iroth stiffened, then morphed into gel as my system pinged.
I heaved for air as I stared blankly at the melting gel before me. Slowly, my breathing returned to normal as I let the fog of battle recede. This was truly the furthest I’d ever sunk into myself during combat. If not for Thrun, I wouldn’t have pushed myself so far.
Well done, looks like we got some crafting experience.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
I blinked, realizing there was a big pile of rat hide where the boss had been. Counting it revealed that there were twenty individual hides or—
400 crafting experience.
“Ha!” I chuckled, picking up the drops in amusement. It didn’t seem that valuable for the effort I’d put into it, but once I gained a couple of levels and improved at the fight, this might become my best training method for crafting.
What do you estimate is the drop rate of the items for this boss?
“Probably 1 in 128 for the rarest item, though it likely has several more common drops,” I replied, returning to the mining camp to process the hides.
Hmm, Thrun grumbled in my head. This grind could take up to 50 hours in that case.
“You never know,” I smiled, not at all miffed by his observation. “We might get lucky.”
I took a short break to calm down and collect more food for the next trip. Then I returned to the hemogris fort and greeted the necromancer who’d respawned since I’d left.
The second battle went way worse than the first, and I was forced to retreat before landing the killing blow. The third and fourth, however, were successes that bolstered my confidence. Each kill took anywhere from fifteen to twenty minutes of intense battle. Then, I needed five to ten minutes to recover and collect more food for the next attempt.
The battles were miserable, with failures every couple of attempts if I tripped or messed up the timing on my moonstone shield. The boss was also awful for experience. Killing it only granted 200 experience split among health, attack, and magic. It was a homeopathic amount, so I began clearing out the rest of the hemogris fort after each kill for experience.
As my levels rose, the battle became incrementally quicker, if not easier. I also grew more skilled at fighting the boss. By the end of the first day, I managed a sub 15 minute kill. When that happened, I resolved to speed up my kill time by one minute a day until I received all the drops from the boss.
In the meantime, I worked to process the absolute treasure trove of materials dropped by the hunched necromancer. The 20 rat hides I’d received on my first kill were the least of my spoils. Iroth sometimes dropped agates and moonstones in stacks of three, piles of 10 steel, or 20 iron ingots more commonly. He also dropped massive amounts of farming fertilizer, charwood acorns, and honeycrisp seeds. I processed all of these to extract the experience from each of them, even if the products weren’t immediately useful.
The days passed, and still, there was one drop that Iroth refused to drop. I celebrated the milestone kills, but by the 100th kill, the sense of urgency had faded completely. I didn’t need to rush to complete the chunk objectives. It wasn’t a matter of if but of when. Hurrying would get me nowhere, so I simply enjoyed the grind.
It was somewhere around the 150th kill that I found myself leaning against the ladder on the ground floor of the fort. The two gray wolves were curled up asleep in their respective cages.
My stint with Fang had taken its toll on them. Both wolves had shrunk to small puppies and fallen all the way to level 8. They were remarkably cute, but I couldn’t help but compare them to what Fang had become.
It’s not worth it, Thrun said softly.
“I know,” I responded. While I could probably train up one of the wolves, it was beyond stupid to attempt it again before I was sure the system could handle monsters who leveled. This was precisely why I’d made sure not to die to Iroth. One or two deaths were fine, but dying on repeat was unacceptable.
I turned away from the wolves to get my mind off what couldn’t be changed and patted the ladder.
“You know what I noticed?” I asked. “I never did name the ground. Like, what should this world be called.”
Flat world, Thrun replied distantly. I could tell he wasn’t paying complete attention even without seeing him.
“That’s dumb.”
It’s descriptive.
“Ok, well, how about white world?”
The world isn’t white.
“It used to be.”
That’s even worse than naming a plant after a made-up name. Call it what it is, not what it was.
“Oi, rude. Fine, what would you name it?”
I couldn't care less. If you are dead set on being sentimental, name it Fang.
“It would be nice to commemorate Fang,” I agreed but then scratched my nose uncertainly. “But isn’t naming it directly, uh...a little bit edgy?”
Of course it is, but you named a wolf Fang.
“Come on, man,” I huffed. “This is serious. What would you name the world if you could name it anything?”
Thrun sighed, and I felt him turn more attention to me. It was a strange feeling. Almost like seeing a camera zoom into focus, but all in my head.
Fine, how about Gefängnis.
“Guh-feng-niss?” I repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word.
Close enough.
“I like it. It's similar enough to Fang and has an epic flair to it. It doesn’t super roll off the tongue, though. How about Gefengnia?”
No, Gefängnis.
“Alright, sure.” I shrugged and kneeled on the ground. I placed my hand on the muddy ground and closed my eyes. “I hereby name this world Gefaengnis.”
Thrun sighed again and turned away as my system pinged. An experience lamp plopped into my lap which I immediately chucked into crafting before resuming my day of boss fighting.
On kill 193, something magical happened. Iroth’s staff clattered to the ground instead of melting into the usual pile of goo. My heart skipped a beat as I registered the drop and the system pinged.
I snatched up the staff and raced to my stash. Way before the system fully reset, I managed to cram the long, skull-adorned haft into the chest. With my spoils saved I fell back and waited for the world to turn black.
Darkness took me.
It had been too long since I’d floated in this void. I savored it as I idly observed the system making changes. This was another big update, and the minutes passed slowly. Several skills changed, with the largest focus on Recovery. While I waited, I reviewed the gains from training on Iroth Grimskull and the hemogris.
I’d converted 940 Iron and 160 steel ingots into weapons, granting me 69,200 experience points in smithing.
The 520 total rat hide combined with the 18 uncut agate and 30 uncut moonstones resulted in 12,560 crafting experience.
Finally, Iroth dropped me 104 charwood acorns and 80 honeycrisp seeds. Farming every one of those seeds, coupled with all the farming I’d been doing before, barely eeked out another farming level.
Which wasn’t even taking into account my combat stat gains.
With all the eating I’d been doing, Recovery had gained by far the most experience, and I’d seen a similar jump in cooking.
There was so much to review that my world blinked back into place by the time I’d looked over everything. I instantly noticed something fundamental had changed with Recovery, but it would take active testing to figure out the details. The chunk objectives had also been updated, and several new skills had been added to my character sheet.
A wolf howled in the distance. I froze. Several more howls shattered the peaceful rustling of the forest. I raced over to the sound, but instead of finding Fang somehow alive, I found the new chunk.
A huge mountain rose beyond the windswept foothills. Ice and snow covered the jagged rocks as enormous white wolves stalked across the peak.
I looked up the slope in wonder. The majestic wolves were enormous, easily shoulder height and as scary as Fang had been when he lived. Fighting an entire pack of wolves, especially on unstable terrain, would be a serious challenge.
It was perfect.