The die landed gently on the cheese and everyone lost sight of it for just a second before an explosion of ice blasted the monster as dozens of magic missiles exploded on instant contact. It took another second for the cheese ball to realize it had been hit, but to everyone’s surprise, there was no roar of pain, just a lot of ice cracking and cheese squelching.
Time continued to pass as the cheese elemental moved around, its body getting hotter as the ice on it melted. The party was relatively close by but still around a couple of dozen feet away from the monster, and they were confused as to why it wasn’t attacking. They were all tempted to attack but, at the same time, curious as to when the monster would finally figure out they were all there.
It took another minute, during which the cheese on its body bubbled as the creature was heated up even more, causing the nearby area to finally smell like cheese pizza. Then once it hit a self-designated internal temperature, a wave of mana spread outward from its body, and everyone realized that the damn thing had just released its presence. It had been in stealth all this time, but more importantly, it had a presence.
“Uhm, guys, do monsters have presences? I don’t think I have felt one yet.” Tesilim asked worriedly.
“They can Tesilim, yes, but god, like everything else with magic, it's complicated,” Alyx replied.
“I see. Well, I would appreciate a quick explanation either way.”
“For a monster, it depends on a copious number of reasons. They could have reached a certain level of power, have a unique quirk that gives them a version of a presence, or maybe they have gained some higher level of intelligence, sapience, or anything in between.”
“You know, I am starting to think your magic teachings are an illusion, and no one really knows anything.”
“Ding, ding, ding. You got it, Tes. People like Alyx tried to put magic in nice boxes, but some of the things I have seen from other worlders over the years defy everything I have come to learn.” Lili commented, getting a glare from Alyx.
“Whatever, let's just get back to the fighting. From now on, telepathy only in case it can understand us.” The gnome stated as he began chanting a spell.
During their chat, the big cheese blob finally noticed them, and once it saw the party moving toward it. It responded by throwing blobs of hot cheese at them. The blobs were easily dodged, but everyone was paying attention to what happened when the blobs landed, and they saw how the splatter cheese left burn marks on the ground as it evaporated.
From there, the fight stayed at a slow pace, and the blob just lazily threw blobs of cheese at the melee party members who could dodge the attacks without even being enhanced. At least as long as they stood back at a respectable distance. Still, they didn’t want to get burned, so they all had their shields up but set closer to their bodies than usual to make it easier to dodge stray blobs.
Meanwhile, Alyx and Jasmine had no shield. In fact, Alyx placed Jasmine on the lookout to make sure that nothing sneaked up on them during this slow phase of the fight. It wouldn’t matter later on when things got started since most things in the area tended to avoid big fights. As for Alyx himself, he had extended his presence and will, increasing his mana regeneration.
The idea the party had quickly discussed during this phase was to let the melees continue distracting the blob while Alyx slowly chipped away at it, at least for now. That way, everyone could keep their mana tanks as full as possible. This was especially true for Drex, who was hanging further back than all three melee combatants. They all wanted to be in tip-top shape, and since Drex and Jasmine couldn’t regenerate regular mana, they would be in the back for the time being.
The final thing that happened during their slow dance with the elemental was Lili giving everyone a mana potion, and by everyone, it was just Tesilim, Rose, and Alyx. Lili herself would drink one for appearance's sake since the potion did nothing for her.
It was about ten minutes into their cheese ball dodge game when the elemental finally did something. Well, maybe that’s a lie. It had been doing something which just involved increasing its temperature. At first, the party hadn’t thought much of it, but eventually, they realized that the hotter it got, the faster it became, even if it was only a minuscule increase.
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Hotter and hotter, the elemental got as its surface bubbled until it finally reached the point that all the dirt on it had melted, the grass and shrubbery long ago having been set a flame and turned to smoke.
Then finally, the elemental hit another temperature point, and with it, the cheeseballs began getting hotter and were thrown at greater speeds. At this point, the cheese elemental was clearly starting to wake up, and they once again discussed whether they should just go all in from the very beginning. Yet, once again, they had reasoned themselves out of doing so.
For one, if they went all out, it would hurt a lot as they unleashed their pure mana. Secondly, this was a good training moment for them to see how they did under pressure against an unknown opponent. Finally, and most importantly, it was an unknown opponent. They didn’t know what kind of ability it might have, like regeneration. It was hard to tell because of the stuff on it, but eventually, they realized as Alyx chipped away at it that it was regenerating since it wasn’t shrinking in size. Then, adding to the fact that some elementals were known to have strong rebirth-like abilities, the party didn’t want to weaken themselves, only to be surprised and forced to flee.
As the tempo of the fight changed with the increase in cheese ball speed, Tesilim and Rose were eventually forced to dismiss their shields and start up their enhancement. At first, it had been fine, but the longer the fight went, the faster and hotter the gobs of cheese got, and it was simply more mana-efficient to dodge the attacks than let more hit their shields. Speaking of dodging attacks, the elemental finally began to dodge Alyx’s attack as its cheese body undulated and split to let the magic missiles fly by.
The fight continued, and another critical point in the cheese elemental was reached.
This time around, the change came when Alyx’s shield was struck by a speedy glob of cheese. The attack obviously surprised the caster, who had been left alone through the whole fight, but even more importantly, the gnome was forced to drop his shield to let the cheese blob drop to the ground, where it began sizzling.
It seemed the rhythm of the fight had truly changed, and everyone outside of Drex was forced to dodge balls of cheese. Alyx and Jasmine had thought about using their shields again but were constantly being forced to drop them since the globs stuck to them constantly eating away at their mana.
The only good thing that finally came with the increase in difficulty was the sweet level of danger, bringing everyone's adrenaline to a new high. And with the pain-suppressing juice flowing in them, the party finally felt it was time to start giving the elemental a good what for.
Tesilim began harassing the elemental with water slashes or force missiles. Rose would get in close as the elemental's attention shifted to Tesilim and would give the elemental a semi-empowered slice. Lili was with Rose, taking advantage of the blob targeting the redhead, and she, too, would put her dark daggers to work. Meanwhile, Alyx kept his barrage of various magical missiles going while Jasmine hit the monster with beams of light that could sear its bubbling cheese flesh.
Drex was annoyed as he watched the party ramp up the fight and dodge an ever-increasing number of cheese globs. The drake knew why he had been told to wait, but he was itching to tear into the monster even if it burned his claws off. Thankfully, by the looks of the fight, it would soon be his time to enter, actually, it was his time to enter as he saw his dad look over at him and motion him to engage.
It had been time to call Drex in since things were really starting to ramp up with the elemental. At some point, after the party had ramped up their damage output, they noticed that the elemental body was starting to flow in one direction. The change had been gradual but easy to spot since before, the monster's body had been more like turbulent cheesy water whereas now it had changed to the beginning of a vortex as all the cheese flowed in one direction.
And sure enough, it only took for Drex to get into the fight until the entire thing got into high gear. Drex came in point-blank and blasted it with poison, making the elementals cheese body gain a green tinge for a few seconds. Then they all watched while still dodging blobs of cheese that turned to slashes of cheese as the spinning cheese blob elemental slowly took the form of a tornado cheese elemental.
Thankfully, during its transformation, everyone except Lili had placed their body enhancement to the highest they could manage since when the vortex finished taking shape, the slashes of cheese got even faster. The damn cheese tornado was throwing them out like it was nothing, and everyone but their C ranker had to give up their offense and adjust to the new level of power, even with their enhancements.
“Alright, everyone, we are in the final stretch now. There is no doubt it still has a few tricks up its sleeve, but those attacks it's making aren’t free. So, now it’s our time to wear it down even more.” Lili spoke in their minds since no one else could, as everyone was focused on dodging. However, they all agreed with her even if they couldn’t say anything.
It was time to start burning mana and really cook this pizza.