---Boss Encounter: ACTIVATED---
The creature emerging from its pale white cocoon slowly began to dominate the final floor of the Festering Den—eight-limbed, two of which ended in a pair of scimitars molded to the sickly white flesh of their bearer. The creature’s torso resembled that of a muscle-bound albino male, ending in a bulbous, bulging spider’s thorax that practically oozed toxic fumes from its rear end. The thin, spindle-like neck of the beast extended until its insect eyes were staring right at the party of invaders who had just entered its realm.
Then its slitted mouth opened, revealing rows of glittering teeth that threw noxious spittle into the faces of its new prey as it roared.
[RACHNEROS, THE PALE LORD]
LVL 30
HP: 550/550
WILL: 280/280
Now that’s some meaty stats, right there…
“Guys?” Ethan asked as his three companions began to back away slowly. “Don’t suppose you can convince this fellow hybrid to just give up and get some [Fashion Sense], if you know what I mean?”
“This is no ordinary hybrid…” Fauna murmured, fumbling with her new staff as she tried to summon a fire spell.
The Lord of the Festering Den lunged in the next second but managed to carve nothing but a hole in its own lair. The hybrids managed to roll out of its strike, and Tara returned fire with a well-aimed arrow that caught the beast in its lithe, lolling neck. It screamed as it tore the arrow free from its wound, a little river of swamp-green blood spurting from its puncture.
“It ain’t no hybrid,” Tara shouted, “but it sure does bleed like one!”
“Concentrate on its neck!” Klax roared as the beast spun to slice clean through the air—an attack that just barely managed to cleave a few threads from the top of Ethan’s hatty form.
“Roger!”
The shout had been Fauna’s, and in the next instant, she aimed right at the creature’s face and let fly a barrage of brilliant fire that slammed straight into the beast’s eyes. Ethan followed up with a Dive attack that sent it reeling right back into its cocoon.
“Don’t let up!” Klax roared. “It’ll have more up its sleeve than just raw po—”
As if on cue, one of Rachneros’s limbs shot out and clipped the Lycae in his shoulder, throwing him clear across the room to land in a burst egg at its end.
“Klax!” Tara yelped. “Bastard. Have this!”
She sent a hail of three arrows sailing for the recovering Arachnid Lord, and with little more than a flash of his organic scimitars, he beat them away, chuckling grimly as he did so.
Let me give you something to laugh about, big guy…
Ethan’s Wing Buffet managed to startle the creature, but it did not knock it prone. Instead, all four of the spider Lord’s limb-legs dug into the ground, and he sent a belch of black bile toward Ethan. Sensing the poison hidden in the liquid-shot, Ethan dove out of the way and managed to circle round to the creature’s back.
“Faun!” he shouted. “Now’s the time for a ‘flame on!’”
“G-got it!”
The beast turned to swipe at the annoying raven pecking at its spine from behind, taking a chunk out of the wall to its right and sending a cascade of rocks down on Tara’s position. Ethan watched her somersault her way out of the falling rubble and let loose three more arrows that found their mark—embedding themselves in the big bastard’s neck.
RACHNEROS HP: 430/550
WILL: 200/280
Let’s see how much longer you can resist… Ethan grimaced, circling the creature and employing his [Hide] skill to great effect. It looked like even the Boss’s four eyes weren’t helping him locate the dark raven as it blended into the black abyss of its lair.
Then, like a flower blooming in the dead of night, Ethan lit up and felt Fauna’s Infernal Coating take effect. He dove right for the spider Lord’s cranium as soon as the heat began to erupt and wrap itself over his feathers.
“Go for it, Ethan!” Tara shouted up. “This fucker’s got nothing on us!”
But Rachneros wasn’t taking any of this sitting down. Indeed, with every hit and every successful puncture of its weak point, the beast seemed to just get more and more agitated.
In a furious flurry of movement, its limbs suddenly twitched out of control, sending rocks and boulders from above down on Fauna and Tara as they blasted him from below. Both girls had to run for their lives as the roof of the chamber literally began to come down on top of them. Meanwhile, Ethan dodged and broke through countless rocks that impeded his path toward his target.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Come on… come on…
As he was within a few inches of Rachneros, the beast sent both its scimitars out to catch Ethan, managing to slice at his claws and send him just off course before the bird could catch his neck.
Fuck!
Ethan ended his Dive in the middle of Rachneros’s spider thorax, knocking the creature back and drawing a torrent of blood from the hole now pierced in its abdomen.
“A sound blow, Ethan!” Klax shouted as he got back up and about and began punching clean through the rockfall from above.
Ethan landed with his companions as Rachneros clutched at pieces of his innards that had begun spilling out across the organic floor of his lair. His breathing became raspy. The walls around them seemed to mimic it—beginning to pulse with each breath the giant spider-hybrid took.
HP: 360/550
WILL: 140/280
“We’re almost there!” Ethan shouted. “A few more shots should do it. Then, this angry boi’s gonna make a great little addition to my Host collection.”
The Hybrids formed up, ready to launch a final assault on the great pale beast as it roared in their faces, sending out a shockwave that each of them had to narrowly avoid as they made their run up to its bleeding body.
“Faun!” Ethan called. “Focus on distracting it! Tara, you know where to aim!”
“Got it!”
“Klax!” Ethan then shouted at the bounding dogman beside him. “Keep an eye on those boulders from above. You’ll have some smashing to do, I’m sure.”
The Lycae smiled. “It is what I’m best at!”
Ethan then focused his energy into a final Dive, feeling the flame from Fauna’s enhancement only grow stronger as he narrowed his eyes and leaped, sailing towards their enemy like a comet plummeting toward an unsuspecting planet.
But the suffering Boss of the Festering Den did not simply wait for them to come. Instead, it plunged both its scimitars into its new sore and drew them back out, each now coated in a different hue of corrupted blood.
And Ethan’s eyes went wide as he swerved to avoid its lightning swipes.
Let me guess… welcome to…
---RACHNEROS, THE PALE LORD---
---PHASE 2---
HP: 300/550
WILL: 100/280
Big bug’s gone supernova… and he cut himself open to do it. That’s new.
Ethan dove out of the overcharged scimitars’ main swipes, dodging to the left and managing to slice into the thin shoulder blade of the creature’s right arm.
“I’m coming back around, guys!” he shouted down as he went back into the shadows. “Give me a sec!”
Then, almost as soon as it had been summoned, Ethan’s Infernal Cloak dissipated entirely.
“Guys?”
When none of the Hybrids answered, Ethan turned to see them scattered on the ground. It seemed that as Rachneros’s right arm had flailed in pain, he had brought it down upon Fauna.
The rabbit girl was coughing, doubled over in pain, and Klax leaped to push her out of the way of another strike—the spider Lord’s left arm seeking her once shining staff with homing precision.
“No, you fucking do—!”
Before Tara could finish her cry, the right scimitar of the beast caught her torso, sending her plummeting to the ground and immediately tensing up.
“W-what’s ha—?”
Before Ethan’s eyes, the catgirl’s body began to crisp and stiffen, and a creeping mass of grey stone began to travel up her legs and slowly wrap itself around her skin until nothing was left but her face, contorted in pain.
“Tara!” Ethan shouted. “I’m coming!”
“Forget me!” the catgirl called out. “Kill that bastard bu—”
Her words were swallowed as the petrifying effect took hold of her completely. Now, she was nothing but a statue suspended in mid-scream.
At the other end of the room, Klax was administering an all purpose antidote to Fauna, watching as the healing potion knit up the cut that had been torn in her stomach. The rabbit girl winced in pain, but her eyes focused on nothing but the sight of her fallen companion.
“Ethan!” she shouted. “Take the All-Purpose potion and pour it on her!”
That's right! That ‘all-purpose antidote’ we got from the slimy lizard guy back in Sanctum...
Ethan obliged, flying past two more deadly strikes from Rachneros as he bounded forward, his torso spilling corrupted blood across the floor, covering the entire chamber in toxic ooze that Ethan could tell would poison anyone who touched it. He hefted up statue-Tara and brought her to Fauna without another word.
“Look out!”
Fauna rattled off a spell of Repulsion that just managed to send Rachneros hurtling back against another assortment of eggs. Ethan glanced back to see that the creature had just leaped at him in a display of power that could probably have ended his life right here and now.
Then, with speed totally incongruous with its size, the beast leaped again, clipping Ethan with its petrifying blade.
Well… shit.
He went down, face-first into the dirt. But, curiously, the blade had only nicked his Host. He, as a hat, was still free to observe and flail about as much as he liked.
For all the good it’ll do me…
Rachneros looked down on him like he was nothing but a sheen of mud to be scraped off a shoe. Then, with a roar of triumph, the beast brought both its blades down to finish him.
Or at least, it would have, if Klax hadn’t intercepted the killing strike.
“HAR-CHAKRA!”
The dogman clapped his hands around the organic hilts of both the creature’s scimitars without even breaking a sweat, keeping it still even as Rachneros began spewing torrents of bloody, toxic spit in his face.
“N… now!” the dogman growled to Fauna. “Shoot it!”
Fauna leveled her staff, her hands shaking as she felt its grooves splinter in her fingers.
“TAKE THE SHOT, FAUNA!”
The rabbitgirl hesitated, looking down at the still-petrified Tara.
“Hey,” Ethan said beside her, his Host’s body now nothing but crumbling stone. “You can do this.”
She blinked. “B-but I might—”
“Fauna,” Ethan said. “Don’t think about ‘what ifs.’ Don’t think about what could go wrong. Just think: Super. Magic. Awesome.”
In this moment, Fauna was probably thinking of her lost family—the people she still felt she had failed when she couldn’t protect them from the human hunters who had destroyed their home and shown no mercy. These thoughts probably always dominated her mind in moments like these, where her team depended on her to do the job only she could do: blow things up.
But Ethan didn’t look at her with definite expectations. Instead, he looked at her as someone looks upon a miracle—no matter what she did, it would be amazing.
And it was that look, and his words, that made her face the raging beast before her, grip her staff tighter, and square her feet, readying a bolt of purifying flame that coursed through her veins and jumped into brilliant life on her staff’s tip.
Then she fired.