As the reborn Chosen of the uber-edgelord Harvest God swung wildly, Lyrhea moved in to make an accurate strike. No, not with her knives, as those had proven to be an inefficient use of her reserves.

Instead, she had been building something for a little while and was now prepared to deliver it into the still-fresh wound that the monster had inflicted upon itself. She leaped up and used a hand to rebound off of the outstretched claws of the boss monster, tumbled through the air, and spat at the Chosen.

The glob of saliva and mucous flew rather slowly compared to the speed of its maker and eventually splashed down on the torn and exposed flesh of the Dungeon Boss. As Lyrhea had predicted, the self-inflicted damage had begun to heal, though it was slow enough for her to lob a few more venom-laden loogies and move on.

This was done, and by the time the last wound sealed shut and scarred over, the number of doses that she had bestowed upon her foe exceeded that of what was in that first vial. Plus, while it had taken time for the vial’s venom to take effect, these new doses were delivered directly into the exposed muscles and blood vessels of the enemy Chosen, ramping up the dosage far beyond what the consumed vial could match.

She expected that the vial only delivered roughly a quarter of its contents into the target’s bloodstream, though she had no data to back it up. It was a hunch that stemmed from the knowledge that simply drinking a toxin didn’t cause as much damage as quickly as injecting it into one’s blood, so to her it stood to reason that the effect that the Chosen had experienced, while extreme, were far from what they could and would have been had she directly injected the vial’s contents instead.

And her hypothesis was proved partially, if not entirely, correct as the boss monster began to not merely stumble about drunkenly but convulse violently and howl in pain. This was what she was hoping would happen, and she used this distraction to try and find a way to end this in a far more expedient manner.

If fiction had taught her anything, it was that inside Dungeons ruled by dark gods there usually was a Dungeon Core of some kind that would act as not merely the command and control of the Dungeon but also as its ultimate Achilles Heel. If she could find it, if it existed at all within reach, she could (hopefully) destroy or critically damage it and thereby put a swifter end to this fight, if not end it then and there.

And so, as the beastly reborn Chosen writhed in pain and clawed itself endlessly, Lyrhea stopped bounding around and began to use this time to investigate and try and find that elusive Dungeon Core. She pulled away vines and pulled up vegetation, even ripping up dirt and soil with her bare hands, and yet the only thing she ever saw beneath all of it was rock, rock, rock, and more rock.

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“Well, I guess we all can’t be stupid enough to leave something so valuable in plain sight….” Lyrhea looked back a the still spasming boss monster and shook her head. “I thought you were more of a cringy, boiler-template first bastard than this, but it would seem that I was wrong about you.”

As she could not see any health pool or anything of the sort above her foe’s head, she had no idea if she was killing the creature with her venom or simply maiming it, though to be fair it was doing some nasty damage to itself. She drew closer and lobbed a few more venom-laced loogies at the beast, with a decent number hitting their mark while others splashed harmlessly on areas where the beast had just moments before rolled away from.

She kept this up even as the beast continued to heal from the wounds it inflicted upon itself, though one thing eventually happened that gave Lyrhea hope of a preferable end to the fight being the destined outcome. The Boss Monster, the edgy reborn Chosen, was slowly healing at a slower and slower rate.

At first, it wasn’t noticeable, but after a while longer, the wounds began to last a fair bit longer before they would begin to repair themselves. This brought a smile to Lyrhea’s face, and she quickly upped the number of doses of her venom that she was sending downrange.

She was getting better at aiming them, too, though that wasn’t something she was overly proud of. Who would be proud of their ability to accurately lob balls of saliva and mucous around, right?

Still, though, as deviant as the method of achieving it was, her actions were having the desired effect, and the wriggling of the Chosen slowed bit by bit as it began to spasm less and less and heal at an equally decreasing rate. Eventually, about ten minutes later, all that was left was a massive body barely moving its chest as it gasped desperately for air.

Slowly and cautiously, Lyrhea approached and paced around her target. It had, by this point, fully healed, and now the beast should very well have been up and about and trying to kill her again. Yet it lay there, barely moving at all and seemingly struggling to breathe, let alone cling to life.

She moved a bit closer, then closer still, and then bolted back as fast as she could as the beast lashed out at her with its claws and snarled as it got back up.

“A cheap trick, that poison…” the Chosen growled. It stepped forward, and while the room was dark Lyrhea could see that it seemingly had recovered completely, including having regained its previous mental state. “But I have been blessed again, and now the final stage begins!”

“So we enter Phase 2…” Lyrhea grumbled as she lowered her posture and prepared to burn more of her reserves. “I fucking hope that this is the final one…”

The two locked eyes, paused for a moment, and then the ‘final’ phase of the battle began.