Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-Four - Broccoli vs Mothra

“Alright, you know the plan,” Amaryllis said.

Caprica ran ahead a little, then brought her shield up, ready to defend us. It wasn’t going to be needed quite yet, though.

The Evil Roots draped across the room created several areas where the giant moth monster wouldn’t be able to cross through. She had to fly up and through a hole in the web-like roots in order to slip onto our side of the boss-room arena. That would give us a bit of time to react.

We might need it, especially as one of the pods hanging off one of the roots shook, then fell off the root to hit the ground with a dull splat, some juices squirting out of the end and across the room.

It stank, and I found myself reaching to pinch my nose on reflex against the wall of putrid stink hitting me.

With a wet gurgle, a wriggling mass of leaves and roots clawed its way out of the pod, covered in a thick layer of goopy slime that it didn’t even bother shaking off itself. An Evil Seedling! We’d fought those ones before, in the Newbinnings dungeon a while ago.

They hadn’t been strong then, just at level one like the technical newborns they were, but that didn’t make them any less of a threat to us when there was a dungeon boss in the room already.

“Broccoli, Awen, go after the flowers,” Amaryllis said.

“Right, got it!” I said. “What about the seedlings?”

“That ugly thing?” Calamity asked. He nocked an arrow with casual ease and shot the seedling through the chest. It collapsed bonelessly, and that was one less threat to deal with.

But there were dozens and dozens of pods on the roots all around us, and I saw a number of them squirming as the monsters within tried to free themselves.

Awen darted to the right, so I went left. The lunaflowers were spread out across the edges of the room; some of them had been crushed by the Evil Roots, but a few were poking out from between them. The flowers were quite large, with petals as big as my hand, all bent upwards in a big teardrop shape with a big opening near the top. There was a bunch of yellow stuff in the middle, sharply contrasted against the deep purple petals.

It wasn’t very nice of me, and my Gardening skill was quick to tell me that it was all wrong, but I grabbed the nearest Lunaflower by the stem right under the flower, then I gave it a vigorous shake.

The yellow powder burst out, surrounding me in an expanding cloud while I held my breath and restrained my Cleaning magic. I didn’t want my magic clearing the air when I specifically needed that low air quality for fighting the boss.

The boss had finally squeezed its way through the opening above and was coming down towards my friends.

It was met in mid-air by a thunderous crack as Amaryllis released a powerful spell aimed right at its chest. Calamity’s shot, in contrast, didn’t make a noise, but as I blinked back the white line crossing my vision from Amaryllis’ spell, I could make out the fletching of one of his arrows poking out of the moth’s chest.

Unsurprisingly, that wasn’t enough to bring her down.

Caprica met the boss’s first probing attack with a heavy clang. She didn’t quite stumble back, but I could tell that it was still a heavy blow.

“The other side! Quick!” Amaryllis said. She moved towards the wall of roots in the middle of the room, the others following after her. Calamity kept twisting around every few steps to let loose another arrow, and Caprica was backing away more slowly, side-stepping into the moth’s path as it stabbed forwards with its pointy-tipped legs.

On the other side of the room, Awen paused within an expanding cloud of yellowish dust and fired her crossbow right in the boss’ side. Then she hooked the bow over her shoulder by its strap and took off running towards the wall.

I wasn’t going to be caught out on this side of the room alone! I bounced towards the wall, only pausing to kick at a few poor flowers on the way to release their pollen into the air. I used a tiny bit of Cleaning magic around my mouth to keep the air I was breathing clear. Awen was using a piece of cloth for the same purpose, but I was worried that it wouldn’t be enough.

I’d have to remember to check on her after.

The boss screeched as Caprica finally slid under a large root, cutting the boss off from being able to hit her.

The screech made all the roots in the room tremble, and then the pods started to fall. I don’t know if it was the shaking, or if the boss could somehow communicate with the roots, but it didn’t matter. I was squeezing my way through the wall of roots as pods splattered on the ground and disgorged Evil Seedlings.

I popped out of the other side of the roots, then immediately deployed Weedbane into its scythe configuration and swiped at one of the seedlings while it was still ripping its way out of its pod.

Amaryllis and Calamity were quick to hit some of the nearest ones as well, before they could start causing any trouble.

“How’s it going?” I called out.

“The boss isn’t taking nearly as much damage as I thought it would,” Amaryllis said. “We’re either going to need to hit it a lot harder, or this is going to take all day.”

Mister Puffles landed nearby. He had been avoiding most of the fighting so far, and I couldn’t really blame him. He didn’t seem equipped for this kind of fighting. “Once the boss starts taking in some of the powder, she’ll be a lot easier to take on,” he said. Then he turned and kicked a seedling that was leaping towards him.

The seedlings were all a little different, I noticed. Some were longer than others, and some had six limbs, others had multiple tails. They were all relatively low to the ground though, with bark-like skin as dark as the Evil Roots they were born from and strange eyeless faces with almost mandible-like mouths.

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At only level one, they weren’t a huge threat in terms of skills, but that didn’t mean they were powerless. Levels only mattered for so much, after all, and I didn’t want to get bitten by anything, regardless of level.

“I’ll take care of the seedlings,” I decided aloud. “You guys focus on the boss!”

“Right,” Amaryllis said.

Awen nodded too, and started to rack another bolt into place. The boss was flying back up to the hole above, but this time she was slashing at the roots as she went through, outright chopping the smaller ones apart so that they came crashing down around us. That would make it easier for her to get through, and it dislodged more of those pods.

I raced around the room with a few bounces, slashing at any fallen pods that hadn’t disgorged the seedlings within yet. Whenever I came close to a lunaflower I give them a quick smack on the stem, shaking them hard enough to send a scattering of dust loose.

The room was starting to fill with a thin haze of yellowish dust, but I didn’t know if it was enough, especially not when the boss was still above it all.

“It’s coming down again!” Amaryllis said. This time she fired a few dozen smaller bolts that sliced upwards and left long burns along the boss’ side, cooking some of the fluff that protected it.

My friends scattered as the boss came crashing down, the sweep of her massive wings and the weight of her passing pushing back the yellow dust filling the air.

My friends started coughing even as they forced themselves to pay attention to the boss.

I grit my teeth and moved faster, cutting clean through another seedling while also preparing a brace of spells. Fireballs, the best ranged option I had after my Cleaning magic.

I let them loose and the brightly burning embers smacked into the boss’ side. A couple caught the big mane of fluff around her neck on fire for a moment. Not very long, but enough to burn through some of its protective floofiness.

Calamity continued to strike at the boss with a flurry of arrows that seemed to enrage it more and more. It stomped towards him, but then Caprica launched forwards with a sudden burst of speed and crashed into the boss shield-first with a heavy thump that sent it reeling until it spread all six feet wide to hold itself up.

A quick slash from Caprica took off one of the boss’ antennae before she flew backwards and away from its retaliatory strikes.

Awen and Calamity kept up the pace, raking the boss with bolts and arrows. Some caught in her fluff, but a lot of them poked through that anyway and soon the boss was starting to look a bit like a pincushion.

“She’s almost down!” Amaryllis said.

I think she was right. The boss was finally breathing in some of that yellow dust, and her motions took on a bit of wobbliness. She was swaying, and it looked like she was having a hard time tracking any one of us for longer than a few seconds. She wasn’t the only one who’d gotten a lungful, however. I noticed all of my friends coughing or holding a hand over their mouths.

I took a big risk and leapt over to the boss, swinging Weedbane around in a wide, sweeping slash that dug into her skin. It didn’t go deep, but it did leave a big wound, and it looked to me like that was how we were going to take her down, with a thousand little cuts.

Amaryllis called down another big lightning strike just as I kicked off the boss, and then Caprica rammed into it again.

The boss crumpled. It wasn’t dead yet, but clearly we’d hurt her a lot. I felt a little guilty as Calamity carefully lined up a shot and fired, the arrow punching through what I guessed was a weak spot in the boss’s carapace and taking it out once and for all.

The boss’s crash to the ground loosened a few last pods, so it wasn’t over quite yet... but really, the seedlings were easy to mop up once all of us could focus on them.

Ding! Congratulations, you have mothdered the ‘Mother of All Moths, the Luminous Matriarch,’ level 8! For defeating a Dungeon boss, bonus exp is gained! EXP reduced for fighting as a group!

The seedlings didn’t fade away the way the boss’ body did.

“That was fast,” Mister Puffles said as he landed nearby.

“Yeah,” I said. I heard Awen coughing, then I frowned and with a bit of focus, blasted some Cleaning magic all around, clearing out the dusty air.

“Ah, thanks,” Awen said as she breathed more deeply. She coughed a few more times, then shook out the handkerchief she’d been using.

“No problem,” I said. I was about to check to make sure everyone was safe and healthy when Calamity interrupted with a loud exclamation.

“Loot!”

I turned to see that he was right, there was loot. Where the boss once stood was now the last fading remains of dungeon monster ashes, and in the middle, a long pole... no, that was a staff! It was as long as I was tall (discounting my ears) and topped with a large glass ball that had a faint white glow coming from it. The staff was made of some sort of pale whitish wood, with some fluffy ruffles near the ball at the top.

Amaryllis was quick to scoop it up. “Oh, now this is nice,” she said as she examined it. “A magical focusing staff.”

“What does it do?” I asked.

“It... focuses magic,” Amaryllis said, giving me a somewhat puzzled look. “Specifically... hmm, it looks like it’s made for light magic.”

I shrugged. The only wand I’d ever really handled didn’t seem to work the way I expected it to. I wondered if this staff was the same.

In any case, it looked like we were done with the boss! Now we just had to clean up the core and fix this dungeon up! Easy!

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