The other bosses were nearing rapidly, baring their teeth at him. The other nine seemed to be stronger than the first one had been, with the largest of them being the final boss. It was a massive spider, made out of dark crystal and eldritch energy. The monster caused the cavern to shake when it stepped, and its fangs were easily as long as Jonathan’s body. He knew that it was time to pull out all the stops, and he started to channel his Divinity into his body, using the lessons that Sarnakthros had imparted onto him. He seemed to swell with energy, and a simple infusion of stamina made him move so fast that he appeared to teleport to Edgar’s sight. Even to his own abilities, he moved faster than he could think.
Like a homing missile, he crashed into the face of the nearest boss, a charge of purple energy coating his hands. The monster was especially grotesque, a snail with a vaguely humanoid head that stood over thirty feet tall. The monster grinned at him as he returned to a speed that it could track, cocky in its position as one of the strongest beings in this cavern. Jonathan returned the gaze with stony silence.
Pure nothingness formed on the end of his fist as he summoned the power of Hungering Decay, and he punched. A detonation of energy blasted the monster backwards, powered by Jonathan’s strength and magical might. Chunks of flesh rained to the ground as the massive snail was pushed backwards. Slime coated Jonathan, but he quickly burned it away with his Void energy.
He touched down a moment later, his body feeling lighter than a balloon, and then pushed off once more. The massive spider launched a bolt of shadowy webbing towards him as he flew, almost as fast as he was moving. This creature was dangerous.
He contorted his body in midair, his Dexterity allowing him to move in a way that would have been impossible for a normal human to match. The bolt of webbing shot by and impacted the far wall, exploding into a hundred foot wide patch of caustic darkness. Edgar was starting to rise into the air, creating a storm of razor sharp wind blades around him, circling them to build up momentum.
Jonathan kept his eyes on his target, and blasted the snail off its slimy foot with his power, shattering the shell as he kept going, his fist burrowing into the flesh. A blast wave of concentrated Voidlight killed the monster once and for all. More essence entered him, almost enough for another level.
Meanwhile, a massive, flightless bird engaged Edgar with a similar mastery over the wind, blasting out blades of concentrated air pressure with its wings. While the wings were too bulky to fly, they were strong enough to whip up storms with ease. Dark lightning cracked around the bird as it fought. Perhaps it was some form of corrupted thunderbird.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Jonathan set his eyes on the next target, the shadowy wraith that he had noticed at the beginning of the floor. It held a greatsword wrought from pure darkness in a two handed grip, and it seemed to be aiming a massive strike at him. Although all of the monsters were in the cavern together, they did not fight well in unison, and their desire to attack him caused them to stumble into one another. These creatures were not fully sapient, different to the bosses of the last few floors. Had they been so, they would have been a far higher threat.
Jonathan flashed across the ground towards his target, launching a Void Cannon at the shadowy figure. Using speed that belied its size, the monster cut the attack out of the air. However, a large chunk of its sword vanished as the attack detonated. With Smite active, Jonathan was finding it easy to fight these creatures. He knew that it would grow harder as the skill started to wear off, but for now, he was cruising along.
Jonathan weaved around the strikes of the other monsters, and charged the shadowy titan’s legs, launching himself towards its head as he went. The best place to aim at on monsters like this was the face, as it was usually the weakest part. However, he had underestimated its speed. One hand came off the sword hilt and slapped him out of the air, slamming him into the ground. Jonathan groaned and rolled away as the monster stomped down where he had been lying. With his new Resilience, all that he had suffered was some bruising.
Jonathan got to his feet and felt his Divinity reserves start to falter as his body ran out of power. He snarled, and threw himself back into the air, this time parrying the incoming blow from the monster. Normally, he would have been sent flying backwards by the force created by the impact, but he struck first, which meant that the monster was the one who was sent stumbling back. Besides, physics became somewhat mushy at his level of power. The System tended to make things that seemed impossible, possible.
Jonathan cocked back his fist and drove it straight into the monster’s face, feeling something squish beneath his hand. The flesh of the monster was just as it appeared, a soft substance that was exactly what Jonathan would expect from a shadow given form. His physical strike did almost nothing to the monster, but the energy contained within it did, and a blast wave of purple light erupted from his hand, blowing a chunk out of the creature’s head. However, it was far from dead, and it reached up, grabbing him out of the air.
The monster roared, somehow making the noise without a solid mouth, and it threw him into the cavern wall, accelerating his body to high speeds. The impact was far more severe than any he had felt before in this battle, and a few of his bones fractured beneath the power. The cavern wall shattered as he made contact, and shards of stone flew everywhere.