A five minute countdown appeared next to the notification, and Jonathan sighed as he realized that he was being forced to wait. He was ready for the next wave, and did not need any rest time. By the time that he had finished reading the message most of his resources had been refilled, and he didn't have any injuries to attend to. As if sensing this annoyance, a set of buttons popped up beneath the timer, which asked whether he wanted to start the next wave prematurely or not. He quickly selected yes, and prepared himself for what was to come.
The air started to grow noticeably warmer, and a trio of glowing worms exploded up out of the earth, each about twenty feet long. Their entire bodies were made out of a mix of glowing rock and actual lava, and they slithered across the ground towards Jonathan, hissing violently as they did so. The heat was coming off of their bodies it seemed, but it was nothing to Jonathan, who had swum in actual lava.
The three monsters opened their mouths wide and sprayed molten rock above the arena, covering a much wider area of effect that their sizes indicated. Jonathan barely got out of the way in time, but that was more out of surprise than anything else. He avoided the brunt of the lava, and ran toward the creature. Before he could reach them however they burrowed back into the ground, vanishing in a matter of seconds. Jonathan paused, and started to hone in his finely tuned senses, relying on his sense of touch to read the vibrations in the earth. They were faint, but they were certainly there, and he was able to get a mental map of where the monsters were under the sand. As they started to rise, Jonathan pretended to be simply confused, and waited until the last moment before he dove to the side.
The creatures burst out of the ground next to him, and he whirled around, driving one ball of Void aspected mana into the nearest worm. The attack found slight resistance, but still went in nonetheless, and what the mana could not do, Jonathan’s strength did amply. The monster almost broke in half at the midpoint, but because of its elemental nature, there were no organs to destroy, and it was still very much alive. However, when it tried to move, its body flopped over, rendering it impotent.
Jonathan danced backwards as the other worms snapped at him, sending flecks of molten spittle onto the sand where it quickly fused into glass. Jonathan gathered more mana, and ran back in, trying to finish off the gravely wounded worm that was flopping around on the ground, trying to right itself.He saw that its body was beginning to meld back together, and if that happened, all of his hard work would be undone. He did not want that to happen, so he quickly battered the monster’s head into a pile of ashen rocks, which caused it to crumble away. He had no idea how exactly elementals worked, but it seemed that most creatures could be taken out with a few strong blows to the head.
The other two elementals vomited up more rock, and this time, some of it landed on Jonathan’s bare skin. It burnt, far more than the lava had, but it wasn't that serious of an attack. His skin bubbled underneath it, but other than the pain, there was barely any actual damage. His durability was becoming somewhat scary. Jonathan grunted in response to the attack, and pushed off the sand, racing toward his quarries. The two monsters dove back into the ground, but he seized the tail end of the nearest one, dragging it back up the surface.The sand provided poor footing for his maneuver, but the worm was not actually that strong compared to him, and he quickly pulled it out of the ground inch by inch. About halfway up, it snapped in half, and he was left holding one wriggling part of its body.
Jonathan slammed the thing into the ground end over end, destroying it utterly. However, it had not been the monster’s head, and the creature was still alive. As Jonathan scanned the underground with his senses once more, he detected another, larger signature, as if the two monsters had merged together. As the rumbling grew and grew, Jonathan prepared himself for what he knew was to come. A moment later, a much larger worm burst out of the ground in front of him, with its fiery skin ever brighter than before. Jonathan took a step backwards from the heat, and then was forced to leap to the side as a glob of fiery energy landed in front of him. The monster had graduated up from firing lava to firing actual balls of fire aspected mana. However, that meant that it was now vulnerable to Jonathan’s Unravel skill.
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He baited out another strike from it by standing still for a the briefest of moments, and as the ball of power grew within his mouth, he sent a large portion of his immense mana pool streaking into its mouth in the form of a tendril of purple light. Rather than just explode, the attack vaporized the monster’s head, using the power of the void to make the effects much more striking than normal. The monster slumped to the ground in front of Jonathan, and he watched as it melted away into the ground, its body tuning into streams of lava. With that, essence entered him, almost bringing him up by another level. The difficulty level of that fight had certainly risen from before but it had not been especially challenging.
As he readied himself for the next fight, Jonathan preemptively sent his Divinity into his gauntlets, ready to activate his runes. As the shimmer of monsters appearing began to grow in the center of the arena, he triggered his skills, sending out a pulse of energy from his Rune of Beckoning towards the forming monsters. Even before he could tell what they were, the creatures started to run toward him, and they quickly came into focus. They looked like spiders, with humanoid features. Jonathan was quickly sensing a theme here among the monsters.
They all looked like corrupted versions of humans, as if they had been long ago devolved into the hideous monsters that they were now. This fit in with the theme of the entire dungeon as well, with the idea of desolation prevalent here. The monsters were about his height and twice as long, and their bulbous, hairy legs beat up the sand as they ran towards him in a uniquely disturbing manner. Jonathan watched in disgust as they neared him, and he quickly shot out his right arm, feeling revulsion as the monster tried to grasp at him with its hairy legs. He grabbed the limb and ripped it out of the socket, pulling the monster towards him. Grabbing the limb, he whipped its previous owner with it, blasting the limb apart into chunks. The creature scurried back, allowing its partner to attack.
Jonathan sent mana into both hands, and surged forwards, thrusting his hands toward the monsters. One of them rapidly spun silk into a shield that hovered in front of it, but when Jonathan’s hand hit, the silk evaporated like smoke before his strike, the power of the void beating it in the end. The spider was caught in the middle of its hairy abdomen by the strike, and Jonathan ripped off a great chunk of its body, sending the monster stumbling backward, hissing in pain. He followed through with a devastating left hook that tore the monster’s head off, sending its body into spasm. It gradually fell to the ground, and melted away.
The other monster was right behind him at this point, and it spat a wad of webbing at him point blank, covering his left side with the sticky substance. It proved resistant to his efforts to remove it, but the spider had underestimated his strength. Jonathan reached the spider with his right hand and ripped the webbing off with ease, throwing it to the side. Rushing the monster, he sent a small amount of Divinity into his right fist, and when his punch connected, the top half of the monster blasted off the rest of its body, sending a shower of gore everywhere. The monster vanished, and another notification appeared in front of Jonathan.
You have completed the second set of waves with an overall performance score of S. This has been calculated based on the injuries that you took, the time that you spent killing the monsters, and your overall grace and technique. Well done for achieving this score, as it is quite rare indeed. The final score will be based on a weighted average of all your scores, with the final one influencing it the most. That is, if you survive.