Author’s corner: HELLO HELLO! CHAPTER 50! IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE!
ANYWAY, as a commemoration for being my longest running story EVER, and reaching the mythical CHAPTER 50, I declare that it’s COOKIE PARTY TIME! FREE COOKIES FOR EVERYONE! BY THE NAIVETY OF CYGNAS! MAY ALL THE COOKIES REACH YOU!
ALSO, on a more serious note. This is a battle heavy chapter, but with a different style compared to the usual, since this is a group battle. I kind of wanted to give this first boss that kind of overwhelming feeling of an unbeatable opponent. I hope it worked well… Still, tell me what you thought of the dungeon’s fights up to now.
ALSO(2), this is a long chapter, reaching 4700+ words, and I’m still proud of it. I COULD have gone a bit further with the story, but then it would reach the 6000+, and that is a bit TOO much for a single day… (^.^’)
ALSO(3), I’ll warn here again. Q & A next Sunday/Monday. Same rules as before. Two questions per poster, any character(author included), no spoiler question. Let the questions roll!
Have a good read!
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I looked at the folded up Drone standing in the center of the room while furrowing my eyebrows. This guy only have as much health as the Foreman drone, which was technically, the feeblest of the two. This don’t make any sense to me. Rather, it makes sense, but I was pretty sure I would not like the meaning of that.
“So… We’ve got nothing on the Boss… Wonderful.” I said in a sour mood.
“Well, that much is usual.” Yagver said with a wry smile. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he went on. “Usually the main bosses from the Dungeon don’t have their skills shown, this way makes it a bit more challenging.”
I sighed. That actually makes a lot of sense, but after these last two guys I wasn’t so sure I liked it. Still standing here only looking bothered wouldn’t bring us sweet loot, so I turned back to them and said.
“So, how are we doing this? Some scouting runs, or all out right from the start?” Everyone stopped to think for a moment, but in the end the answer was:
“Let’s go all at once. If we kill, it’s good, if we die, we understand the fight a bit better.” Yagver said with a serious face. I nodded and looked towards Yuu and Han-chan, whom also nodded in agreement.
I changed back to my sword and shield before we started the fight, as there was no need for us to worry about the drill hands, and I could work nicely as an off-tank if it was needed. Even better, the shield-mastery skill was almost reaching intermediate, so after one more fight I should get it to the upper levels!
But then, the bow mastery skill was also a step away from intermediate, so I was a bit conflicted on which to focus from now on…
And one-handed sword was still on intermediate level two, so it’s a bit sad, as it took so long to level up…
Sadly, it seems that getting into a group slows down recklessness leveling, so it’s still a bit on the low side, having only earned a single level the whole dungeon.
And yes, I am resorting to escapism to avoid the terrible fate that awaits me. WHAT? GOT A PROBLEM?
We approached the armor standing in the middle of the room, but even when we got at touching distance of him, the boss did not move at all. He simply laid there, as if waiting for us to do our first move.
We gave the right of the first strike to no one other than Sir Yagver himself! Why? Because the best strategy against an unknown enemy is for you to let the main tank keep all the agro.
He took some distance from the dormant drone and took a deep breath before casting his leaping skill. According to him, this was his strongest hitting skill if you take in consideration all the hits, from the landing impact, the small quake and the sword slash.
But as soon as his sword landed on Excel’s body, it bounced back harmlessly, showing us a still full health drone that didn’t have a single dent in its plating.
He looked at us with a surprised look.
“You really need to sharpen your weapon.” I said with a playful tone. “Or get fencing. It also helps.”
“But I already have fencing... My sword mastery is at intermediate…” He started speaking, but Lenny put her hand into his shoulder and shook her head.
“Please, ignore that. It was a joke about another game.” She said with a tired tone. Oh, so she got it? Does she also plays monster hunter? Then she looked back at the Drone. “Still… He doesn’t look all that threatening if he stands still like thi…”
Just as she finished her words, light started to shine from the eye-sockets of the drone. The focus of the light ran from one side to the other a couple of times as he scanned us, and all of us took a step back as Yuu, Lenny and Han-chan tried to attack it with their skills.
The ice spear shattered on contact, the wind-blades simply disappeared and the arrows bounced off like they were hitting a wall. Lenny even tried the skill rapid-fire on the boss, but not even one point of his health came down. I even tried approaching and using shield slam on it, but the bastard didn’t even flinch with my attack. What the hell is this boss?
We all backed down, and it took the boss a whole thirty seconds to do something. All of sudden the light blue light in his eyes started to spread through his body, forming markings all over the plating, and as it spread, the body slowly started to spring into life.
The neck was the first, as the thin dome-shaped head he had slowly separated from the body and a thick layer of crystal emerged to cover and protect the fragile looking mechanism.
Next came the arms, which firstly separated from the body and quickly unfolded themselves, revealing a hand-like gauntlet on his right and a long and thick blade on the left.
Then came the torso and the legs, which slid from within, revealing two thick greave-like feet and armored legs.
Right as the shape became complete, crystals sprouted from within the torso and started to spread around the limbs, covering the fragile looking joints in a thick layer of crystalline muscles that flexed a couple of times as if checking the condition of his body.
“Is it just me who is nearly scared shitless here?” I said while looking at the towering four meters giant in front of us. The others shook their heads slowly as they stared at the boss. “Good… Rather, isn’t this bad?” I said as I saw the boss slowly extending his sword upwards and the crystal in his hand started to gather around it, making the sword even bigger than before.
The scene was so unbelievable that it took me a whole second to click what was happening, but I still managed to shout on time.
“RUN!”
We spread our group in half, as the blade fell on our previous position, with me, Yuu, Lenny and Xredder to one side, and Lieutenant, Yagver, Han-chan and Forgotten to the other.
However, the two meters long sword didn’t stop with only piercing the ground like it was butter, but it also spread forward, forming a crystalline wall between the two groups that went all the way until the end of the room.
We looked surprised at it for a moment until I noticed the boss turning his other arm to us, and the crystal from his arm spread around his finger, forming a huge crystal chunk with many spikes on its end.
“CYGNAS DAMMIT! RUN AGAIN!” I shouted as a barrage of crystals started to rain upon us. I went at the front of our group with my shield raised to see if I could stop some of the shrapnel from landing on the others.
“Come on! We can’t leave them like that!” I heard Yagver shouting from the other side as he and Han-chan charged towards the boss, but…
“Well, do something about that nasty armor of his! My attacks are still bouncing off!” Hanbei complained.
“I TOLD YOU TO GET FENCING!” I shouted jokingly.
“NOT NOW, GON!” She complained back as I smirked a little before regaining my focus.
As soon as we reached the side opposite to the one he created the wall, the shooting barrage stopped and we managed to catch our breaths back. I took a good long look at the boss and turned to Xredder.
“The crystals.” We said in unison to each other before nodding.
I immediately cast Tactical charge on him and darted forwards right after. He landed both of his fists on the right leg’s crystal while I landed my prized shield slam on the right one.
However, the ones who felt the impact of the skill wasn’t the drone, but us. I grimaced as my left arm went numb and could only feel pity towards Xredder, who used both of his arms on the attack.
The Drone turned towards us after our attacks, spinning his torso around without moving his legs while landing a sweeping slash on my shield.
Even if I managed to stop the damage, I was still blown heavily backwards, taking Xredder with me. We didn’t spend too much time on the ground as we saw the boss lifting his right arm towards us as a single huge spear-like crystal formed on it. Even if we went our fastest with getting up, it still wasn’t enough, as the boss pulled back his arm and prepared to launch the skill on us.
But at the last second a roar came from his other side as Yagver used his taunt. In one swift movement, the boss spun around mid-swing and launched the crystal towards the Jötunn’s huge tower-shield.
Even then, he still slid a few good meters backwards, and his health depleted for a little bit. I saw as he grimaced at that, and frowned when the boss moved for the first time, running towards him with his blade lifted.
At least it wasn’t the arena-splitting strike from before, so the Jötunn managed to stand his ground and stop the attack easily. The rest of the group used this chance to go and attack the huge drone. But all of our attacks kept bouncing off his armor leaving us with absolutely no damage dealt at all.
“What the freak is this guy? How the hell are we supposed to beat him?” Xredder complained besides me as we once again fell back.
“Well, there must be something we are overlooking here!” I said as I looked around the room for some kind of mechanism to use, but with all the walls covered in crystal, there really was nothing useable in this whole area.
The boss suddenly stopped attacking our tanker and took a step back, changing his right arm into a huge spear like shape. Sir Yagver braced himself for impact, but it was unneeded, as the drone landed the strike right into the ground, making the whole room shake for a moment and shattering the crystal wall.
He stood there with his hand into the ground for a moment and we all watched worried for a moment.
After a second, three points in the ground started to crack and a small piece of crystal appeared there. Noticing that one of these crystal tips was right beneath me, and having bad memories of crystalline tips coming from beneath me, I immediately jumped away right as a huge triangular crystalline pillar pierced the ground and went all the way to the ceiling.
I looked at the familiar scene with a slightly wry smile. Luckily, it seems that the others weren’t caught in the skill.
The boss kept crouched for a full two seconds even after the pillars formed, but after enough time passed, he pulled back his hand with a shattering sound, as the crystal on the ground detached from the one in his arm.
Afterwards he turned towards a random side of the room with the hand-gauntlet still covered in crystals. The, for a moment, the shine in his eyes and body changed from the blue color to a deep red one, a coloration that soon was followed by the crystal.
He shot the red crystal spear into the wall and turned back to Yagver as his coloration turned back to blue. We all looked confused towards the flying crystal and got shocked as it, instead of shattering against the wall, it simply fused with it, like it fell on a pond of water.
Now, in that spot of the room, was a red stain in the blue wall. I looked at it for a moment while trying to understand what exactly it was, even when the others started to think of a way to defeat the boss.
After a brief while, the red spot started moving through the wall with an extremely high speed, spinning around the room until it stopped right in front of one of the pillars. Right afterwards, the red tip peeked out from the wall as the crystal shot itself from the wall towards one of the pillars, tinting it red.
The scene repeated itself, but instead of a single crystal, two of them jumped from the pillar towards the other two remaining pillars, followed by four crystals peeping out from these other pillars.
“Damn… WATCH OUT!” I shouted to the group as the crystals shot themselves from the pillar towards a few of us.
I blocked the shot aimed towards me while Yuu and Lenny managed to move away from it. Still, Hanbei didn’t react in time and was shot in the back, loosing almost half of her health. Even when I blocked, I lost around ten percent myself.
“What the hell was that?” Lenny shouted surprised as she saw the red crystal fusing back into the wall.
When I looked towards Yuu, I noticed that her crystal also went back to the wall, and both of them started repositioning themselves towards the pillars.
“The red crystal keeps jumping from the wall, and these pillars double their amounts!” I said nervously.
“Then what do we do?” Xredder asked looking at the red spots moving around.
“How the hell would I know?” I said back to him.
“Shishou! Can’t we redirect these crystals towards the boss?” Yuu said while approaching the boss once again.
“Good idea, Disciple!” I said cheerfully.
We all looked towards each other and nodded, gathering ourselves at the boss feet just in time as the two red crystals jumped towards the pillars, multiplying from two, to four, then eight as it jumped towards us.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Since we saw this one coming, we all managed to dodge in time and saw as the crystals hit the boss straight on, making him flinch.
We all shouted cheerfully, but suddenly stopped, as we saw the boss’s health still locked at 6000 points.
And even worse, the red crystal, instead of shattering or damaging the boss, started to fuse back into him. Excel started trembling, almost as if he was furious and started to redirect all the red crystal on his back towards the sword, giving it an evil red coating.
And as a tensed up spring that was released, he made a full spin around, extending his sword that grew to a massive size to the point of even reaching the opposite size of the room, shattering all the pillars and making a huge gash on the wall.
Not even blocking the attack with nature’s bastion managed to help me survive this. And even if I didn’t survive, the others surely were dead.
A clean and beautiful wipe.
Luckily, the game wasn’t evil enough to make us run all the way back here, and we revived at the mini-bosses room.
I sat down to see if I could somehow control my still pumping adrenaline and calm down enough to process what the hell just happened.
“Okay… I think we have ourselves a bugged boss…” Xredder said with an annoyed tone.
“Either that, or we are missing a key part of his mechanics…” Sir Yagver said while shaking his head.
I grimaced and gave a quick look towards the recently summoned Aura, who blinked surprised and stared at nowhere for a moment before shaking her head. So Cyg said that it’s not bugged, then we are missing something.
I laid back on the ground and started to think of what exactly we could do.
“Firstly, we have to do something about those red crystals.” I said after some time. “They come far too soon, and if we leave them alone they will overwhelm us too fast.” Yagver stopped to think for a moment and nodded.
“Even if we manage to find a way to damage the boss, it won’t matter if we die before killing him.” He said with a grim face.
“The ones you blocked didn’t start splitting again. Can’t you just stop them?” Xredder said while looking at me, but I shook my head.
“Those things move far too fast on the wall. I don’t think I can reach them before they jump towards the pillars.” I said with a frown. “We need to find a different way to stop them from reaching the pillars.”
“Then, could we not break the pillars?” Yuu asked. “If we cannot stop them from reaching the pillar, we make so that there is no pillar to reach!”
We all looked surprised at her before nodding towards each other. I petted her as a reward and we quickly took our way back to the boss’ room.
At least, this time we didn’t need to worry about waiting for the boss to activate. Even if the whole room had been restored back to the way it was before we started the fight, the boss was already standing up right in the middle of the room, as if waiting for us.
We entered the room all at once, and as soon as we got into the boss’ range he started his motion of raising the sword up high while gathering the crystal into in the sword and swinging it down between us. We once again divided ourselves between left and right and the boss once again barraged my group with the crystal shooting.
Right after sweeping our half of the room, the boss spread the crystal in his hands and slammed it down on the ground, completely ignoring the earlier pattern where he would launch the spear before going for melee on the tank.
But this worked well for us, as we quickly dodged the three pillars surging. All the damage dealers spread themselves, each going for one pillar and we started attacking them, and much to our delight, right after the first hit landed on one of the pillars, a name-plate appeared above them, indicating that each had six hundred health points.
We didn’t manage to destroy the pillars before the boss shot the red crystal, but we managed to destroy the three of them just in time, before the red crystal jumped back towards them.
But it wasn’t without unpleasant surprises, as the pillars went out in a large explosion, spreading shrapnel in every direction within a short area around them. And did those things hurt! I lost a third of my health in the blast, while Yuu, who only used cloth armor lost more than half.
At least we managed to stop the crystal from spreading even more.
Our health slowly started to come back up as Forgotten started spamming his heals. Meanwhile I noticed that the that shot all the way towards the other side of the room had a slight change in behavior.
Instead of aiming towards us, it went towards the wall farthest from the boss and prepared to shoot itself toward the drone.
Not on my watch!
I jumped towards the back of the boss and blocked the crystal from fusing back with Excel. I really don’t want to risk getting that huge red sword again.
After recovering from the blow and dodging a spinning slash from the boss, I looked back at Yagver and received a thankful nod from him.
Well, that is one crisis averted, now to find a way to kill the freak-show.
We once again started to attack him and try to land a blow, but it was to no avail as no matter where we attacked, none of our attacks would even make a single scratch on him. We grimaced at this, but kept up until the boss did something different.
He gathered the crystals on his sword again and turned towards us while swinging his sword in a downwards slash. But instead of piercing the ground as before, the crystal became flexible and long, like a whip, and the boss swung it so it would try to hit Lenny, our furthest member.
She managed to jump away from the attack as she noticed it coming, but the boss lifted his arm and whipped with the crystal again twice, trying to land a hit on the harpy. But our ranged damage dealer isn’t so foolish to fall for such an easy attack, and she easily dodged all of them.
However, these attacks were leaving some small crystal fragments on the ground, and the moment that Lenny got near to one of them during a dodge, the fragment exploded, reaping away half of her health in one single blow.
“YUU, SHOOT THE FRAGMENTS DOWN!” I shouted to her, who complied immediately by launching her spear towards the crystal and making them explode prematurely.
“You freaking drone…” Lenny muttered as she raised herself in anger and shot at the whip resting near her.
-42 (558/600)
We all froze in surprise for a moment, which was enough to let the boss pull the crystals back and ready another strike, this one with a little more wind-up than the whip. It was the room splitter again!
But… That damage… It couldn’t be, right?
I turned towards sir Yagver.
“STOP THAT SWORD!” I shouted to him, which made him eye me surprised for a moment before receiving a nod.
I cast Tactical Charge on the huge Jöntunn, which made him reach our group right on time to raise his shield and stop the sword from reaching the ground. But it wasn’t without price, as he lost half of his health on the exchange and kept losing a little less than five percent per second.
“FORGOTTEN, KEEP ME ALIVE! EVERYONE ELSE, ATTACK THE SWORD!” Yagver shouted after getting the gist of my plan and making the others snap out of their trance and start attacking the sword.
I was the first one, approaching the sword and landing my shield slam followed by a five seconds slice ‘n dice.
-42 -12(x8) -1(x8) -24(Critical!)(x2) -2(Critical!)(x2)
-198 (602/800)
YES! It’s working!
The others also started to land their heavy-hitting attacks all at once, and right when Yagver’s health was down to ten percent, the sword’s health finally hit the very bottom, and it cracks appeared on its surface.
Then it shattered.
However, that wasn’t all, as Excel took a step back as if something huge landed a hit on him and threw his sword-hand backwards. A hand, that was now completely free of the tissue-like crystal.
The drone looked towards its arm for a moment before it finally lost its energy and fell limp besides its torso.
Lenny was the first one to react to that, and shot an arrow towards the limp hand, and instead of bouncing off, the arrow stuck on it, and landed a dealt full damage to it. We all widened our eyes surprised, but when the damage numbers came up we went back to our frown.
-43 (0/800)
This wasn’t the boss’ health, this was still the arm’s health!
Then, what the hell is happening here?
As we thought this, the boss finally turned its attention back to us, and extended its gauntlet hand angrily towards us, as even more crystals started to gather around it and his legs, making his muscle-like crystal even bigger, as if he had been working out.
Before we could move away, he turned towards us with the hand and started shooting a heavy barrage of crystal on all the room in front of him. We had to run away from him to avoid the crystals, but he didn’t just stop there, and as soon as he made a full swiping barrage, he recoiled his bulky arms and formed the spear-thrower again and aimed at random persons in the group.
He kept shooting the spear non-stop for a whole half minute, not even giving us a moment to rest before he would target the next person and shoot him.
After he finally calmed down, he raised his arm up high and slammed the heavy crystal heavily into the ground.
Although we were a bit shocked at the start, we were already used to dealing with this skill, so we quickly moved away from the surging pillars. However, instead of three pillars, now there were four of them.
Afterwards, he immediately shot the red crystal on the wall, where it started swimming around. We managed to destroy three of the pillars in time, however, the crystal still managed to enter the one left up and shot towards Xredder and Han-chan, who both managed to dodge the skill on time.
We broke the fourth pillar immediately afterwards, and I ran towards the boss so I could block the two crystals from fusing back with him.
“Okay, we broke one of his arms, what’s next??” Xredder asked nervously.
“Break the other one?” I said mischievously.
“Err… Guys… His arm is almost back to full health…” Han-chan said from the other side.
“What?” I asked surprised, and she turned to me to explain to me.
“His arm is regenerating a lot of… WATCH OUT!” She suddenly shouted, and I turned back to the boss, just in time to notice that his crystals had turned green and he was raising his right leg up in the air.
Cripes.
I rolled away just as he slammed the leg back into the ground and even deeper, as it easily pierced and went all the way to his knees into the floor. We didn’t even have enough time to stop and understand what was happening before the green crystal started to spread through the ground like a disease, covering almost half of the arena’s ground.
“Oh… God.” I barely managed to say right as the border of the circle suddenly sprouted into thick evil looking spikes. Luckily, most of the group managed to get away, but Xredder, Yagver and I weren’t so lucky, as we were too close to the boss to get away, so we were caught into the death trap. “Break the crystals! Quickly!”
The others quickly started to attack the crystals, however, these ones had almost a full one thousands health points, and with me and Xredder locked within the trap, we couldn’t get close or we would risk being pierced to death, as every second that passed, the border would get a bit smaller as more spikes sprouted up.
I quickly used cycle weapons and started to shoot my arrows at the barrier to try and deal some damage, but this took my concentration away from the boss for a moment. A simple and fatal mistake.
“GON! LOOK OUT!” Yagver shouted to me, and when I turned back, there it was. A huge crystal whip swinging downwards toward my head.
-343 (287/630)
I was flattened against the ground in a painful blow, followed by a horizontal swing that threw me towards the spikes, giving me a painful death.
-236 -325
-561 (0/630)
I was left in my spirit form and was pulled back to the mini-boss room as I blinked surprised. A window popped up warning me that I couldn’t revive myself until the battle ended, so I sat down and waited patiently. Not even one minute later, Yagver and Xredder popped up, and soon the others came in succession.
“DAMMIT!” Xredder shouted angrily as he stomped the ground. “What the hell is that boss? How are we supposed to beat that monster?”
As he complained, I looked at my experience bar and noticed how little it had decreased. Does this mean that this boss was that powerful? As I wondered about this, Yagver answered the angry tiger-man.
“Calm down. At least we managed to hit something this time around!” He said clearly more cheerful this time.
“Yup… And I think I have an idea on what do we have to do.” Han-chan said with a slightly evil smile. We blinked surprised and listened attentively to her words. “You see, we managed to destroy his arm, right?” We all nodded. “Yet, it clearly regenerated after around one minute, right?” Once again we nodded, and we started to get where she wanted to go with this. “Which means we have to deal constant damage to keep it destroyed. Doesn’t this pretty much scream that we have to keep it destroyed?”
“I see…” Xredder said with wicked smile.
“So, we will do him like jack the ripper…” I said while raising myself from the ground. “We’ll pick him one part at a time.”
And we once again walked towards the boss’ room.