Mammon stared down at the two heroes that had dared challenge him, his eyes glowing brightly with a malicious scarlet light. It brought back a lot of nostalgic memories of his numerous lives. Some were a bit more serious than the others, but in summary, this wasn’t his first rodeo acting as some sort of villainous boss who’s about to challenge challengers inside his lair of evil.
Noel and Anna teleported into the air and departed away from the ground. That seemed to have been the right call, as, in the next moment, an armored monster appeared where they stood in the blink of an eye, with its fists outstretched towards the empty air.
“Aw, shucks!” Mammon whined. “Poor little me, a brute knight fighting against two mages!”
Noel remained calm, his eyes brimming with killing intent. He wagged his finger, formed numerous bolts of mana, and shot them forward at blitzing speed.
Anna followed up that attack by raising both of her arms to the side and clasping them together. On the ground, a dome of cement rose up to the sky as Mammon found his arms and legs bound by rocky chains.
He remained unmoving from his place, and simply let the barrage of arrows land on his body. Clang after clang, the mana bolts punctured a bit through the thick exoskeleton around his body, but none of them managed to reach his actual body and they soon dissipated without the constant control exerted by Noel.
“Weak,” Mammon murmured. He grunted and pulled his arms and legs out of the tight bindings wrapping around them, and like the regeneration of a troll, the minor wounds and dents formed on his body started to disappear as his body’s extreme vitality started to do its magic.
“Arrogant,” Noel waved his hand, tearing out chunks from the broken ceiling and lunging them towards Rob, while Anna pressed her hand down as the ground beneath Mammon sunk down to form a large hole.
The broken ceiling dropped down inside the hole, burying the imposing armored man under many layers of white cement-like stone, and for a moment, things quieted down.
“Let’s go!” Noel flew off into the sky, while secretly thinking to himself, The boss horned rabbit, if we can kill it, we’ll be able to get away from this place!
“Looking for the boss monster?” a voice whispered to his ear, and before Noel could react, a large monstrous hand pierced through the various layers of protection he had placed on his body as his body flew across the underground space and into a distant wall with a loud boom.
Anna hurriedly retreated back, alarmed by the fact that not only is this guy physically strong, but he can also fucking teleport! Just as she arrived near the massive hole in the ceiling, the armored figure clouded her view of the open sky, with its scarlet eyes glowing in… delight.
“Boo,” Mammon whispered, and with a casual sweep of his leg, Anna was sent flying down toward the ground as a deep crater formed on the place where she landed.
“Ugh…,” groaned Anna. Her vision was blurred by a cloud of dust and her body was aching in pain, but it wasn’t fatal. She managed to cover herself in a layer of soft winds while also manipulating the ground beneath her to soften up before crashing, but it was still painful as heck.
“Sigh, you two didn’t even expect that I was able to teleport? I know that I’m basically super fast, but that’s not an excuse for the teleport schmuck,” said Rob, shaking his head in dismay. He had expected more from them, he had expected more from this Archmage of Miracles, but so far, they were barely keeping up with him - to be fair, his physical prowess had risen to the peak of Arch Knights and he could deal with a group of wyverns without much problem if he so wished and moved at full power.
And to also be fair once again, he’s only using a portion of that maximum physical strength of his since he would severely lack control and finesse if he were to do so.
Although this is partially because of the fact that our luck doesn’t have that big of a gap and we’re inside a dungeon, so no world meddling by Tyr, Mammon thought. Sigh, so many mishaps had happened because of those goddamn planets.
As Mammon scratched his chin and hummed a jazzy tune, a black sword with white edges pounced towards the back of his chest, but Mammon simply spun on the tip of his heel and punched the black sword, snapping it into two.
But that didn’t break the sword. Instead, it transformed into two smaller swords and punctured through the eyeholes of his helmet, stabbing into his eyes.
“AHHHH!” Mammon shrieked exaggeratedly. He fell down to his knees and grabbed his eyes that bled a river of tears. “FUCK! I’M… I’M… I’M fine.”
As soon as he looked up to dramatically reveal his perfectly fine eyes, a river of flames and a cage had already covered him at all sides, trapping him inside with no way out - including teleport.
“Ugh, you guys are so lame.” Mammon rolled his eyes and slowly stood up. He ignored the converging flames and tightening prison of light, instead, he stomped his legs down the ground. The floor ruptured and formed an increasingly large crater, allowing him to simply avoid the incoming attacks by going down beneath them.
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Noel was more experienced though, and had placed a homing function on the light cage, which then followed Mammon by sinking downwards. Mammon clicked his tongue and took a deep breath.
The mana within his body, within his heart and cells, started to surge towards his legs as the dark red lines all over his black carapace-like armor glowed brightly.
With a whip-like kick, a loud bang was heard and the cage of light shattered into numerous fragments. The wind blew forward to form a large tidal wave, pressing up towards Noel and Anna.
Anna gritted her teeth and pushed her hands forward, manipulating the spirits of wind to stop the incoming attack. Noel appeared right beside Anna with a teleport and grabbed her by the waist while already preparing for another short teleport.
Mammon watched them as his helmet formed a crooked grin. He squatted down and, with another loud boom that formed a deeper indent on the ground beneath him, he launched towards the air at breakneck speed, transforming into a shadowy blur to the naked eye.
Noel successfully finished his spell at the last moment and disappeared with Anna just as Mammon arrived before them.
He wasn’t flustered though as his body continued to rise higher until it flew out of the hole high up in the ceiling.
“Run as much as you want, you’re forever trapped here, you little rats!” Mammon laughed, his voice distorted and warped to the point it sounded demonic rather than something out of a human. He leaped once more into the sky, and the entire dungeon appeared in his view in all its entirety, with the grassy fields and occasional trees.
“Fuck, it’s just as I expected,” Noel whispered, his eyes throbbing with blood vessels as he finished casting a divination spell. “The boss… It’s with him, inside a pocket dimension.”
“You mean… we’re trapped here?” asked Anna, quivering.
“Not quite. All I need to do is destroy that pocket dimension, and the boss would automatically die, so we can get out of here,” Noel muttered as he moved his gaze at the sky where Mammon was… floating? He seemed to be standing in the air on an invisible platform using some sort of spell. “My mana reserve is full now. What about you?”
“I’m full too,” Anna mumbled. ‘It’s great that the ambient mana in this dungeon is so high, or else we’d be in deeper trouble.’
“Okay, on my mark, we’ll do our best to distract him while I prepare my magic formation to destroy the pocket dimension,” said Noel.
Silently, he clicked his tongue as he stared at Mammon’s floating figure. Quasi-Arch Knight strength with martial arts… It’d take a miracle to pull this off.
…
Mammon stood high in the air and stared at where Noel and Anna were hiding with a bored gaze. While yes, he can understand that Noel is way too big of an expectation for someone who only has the mana reserves of a Grand Mage, still… he’s kind of weak.
“Or maybe I’m too strong and experienced?” Mammon rubbed his chin. “You know what, maybe I am in the wrong here.”
Just as his mind began to wander, over a hundred clones of Noel suddenly appeared before him, entrapping him within a large circle with no gaps to escape through other than up or down. He looked around, eyeing them with glowing red eyes, intrigued by their desperado to escape this dungeon.
The Noels then rushed toward him with haste, either launching out spells or simply going for a punch or a kick. Mammon stood still and tanked through the numerous attacks that landed on him. It was obvious as daylight as to what Noel planned, but Mammon was more than willing to play with whatever Noel had cooked.
But, as time continued to pass, with only more and more Noel clones appearing, dying one by one in their pitiful attempts to damage him, Mammon started to feel bored. He looked down at the ground and dismissed the minute threats around him that dealt barely-felt attacks as he wondered just what those two planned on doing.
And then… Like an incredulous magic show, from the far distance, an incredibly large, gargantuan, titanic humanoid being made out of uprooted trees and brown soil appeared in a matter of seconds, with empty eye sockets and a body full of minor cracks.
“Oh,” Mammon hummed.
Around the giant earthen titan, earth spirits swirled and swooshed as his luck inspection allowed him to see the visible and the invisible. Inside the huge earthen titan, deep within its core, a ginormous vortex of twisting lights illuminated his entire view, destroying Anna’s pitiful plans of hiding where she was.
“How… idiotic,” Mammon calmly stood high in the air, his armored figure as calm as a stone rod.
The earthen titan took an unsteady first step before it regained its balance. Then another step, now a lot more balanced. A third, then a fourth, until it began to run forward with a loud boom following each step it took.
“So spirit magic is able to be used without having to depend on the mana of the user. The spirits just need to be willing to lend their power to the caster without having them pay a price,” Mammon mumbled. “Oh well, it’s not like this would make a difference.”
Rob’s body began to blow brightly once again in a dark red light. He planted his feet firmly on the invisible platform below him and took a deep breath.
“GOOD, GOOD!” Mammon shouted with an exaggerated tone of villainy. “PROVE YOUR WORTH TO ME, HEROES! LET US SEE WHETHER YOU DESERVE TO LIVE OR NOT!”
The earthen titan roared loudly and reared back its fist. Mammon grinned in return and also pulled back his hand. The earthen titan punched forward, and Mammon followed.
BANG!
As their fist collided, one incredibly large and one above average, a shadow flew out from the point of impact as Rob’s body crashed from one hill to another. His armored figure punctured through various trees, and in the end, he found himself deep inside a large hole in the ground, covered by soil, leaves, and roots.
“Wowzers,” Mammon grunted and slowly stood up. He grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled himself out. Then, he wiped his eyes to remove the dirt that clouded his vision, before finally seeing the rapidly approaching earthen titan in the distance.
“What a poetic fight.” Mammon grinned, his eyes turning into a darker shade of red as his body began to float into the air, unsupported by any sort of spell or mana. “I don’t know the full details, but you’ve clearly inherited the power of the one who had slain Oscar Vane, Annabeth Auburn!”
“It’s time to repeat the tides of history!” Mammon roared.
He waved his arm, and as Anna manipulated the giant earthen titan to rush forward, she halted for a moment as her eyes widened in fear. In front of her, earth and dust gathered into a large sphere, which then rapidly shrunk down to form a large chunk of dark metal that enveloped Rob’s body, until eventually, a huge ten-meter-tall titan appeared before her, one made out of flesh and metal!
“COME!” the titan roared, and its eyes glowed with a harrowing dark red light.