Knowing that there was nothing in her way to worry about, Yoshitsune sprung again at Uragoe. Her body, infused with the power of electricity, plunged her sparking blade towards her hated foe. Knives of wind interrupted the attack and only brought sparks to singe the bird’s body.

She tried over and over and over to penetrate deep into Uragoe’s defenses. Sword strikes and waves of lightning were minimized and deflected in the raging ball of wind. She was feral without direction; powerful without precision. It was unbecoming.

“What’s wrong, Yoshitsune,” Uragoe taunted from his defensive position. “Aren’t as effective without your favorite toy, are you?”

A tall, wooden bow materialized out of thin air to land in Uragoe’s hands. Yoshitsune charged him like a wild beast; her teeth bared and her voice screaming incoherently. But, with a swish of Uragoe’s hand, a strong wind pushed Yoshitsune away.

She was no wild animal and both Uragoe and I knew it. In this form, she was nothing but a predictable and pathetic creature that we farmed for XP. He was playing with her, pushing her around this way and that without dealing any damage. A large smile widened beneath his elongated nose. Like a recess bully, he took a great amount of joy in holding Yoshitsune’s head down. This was a toy that was not supposed to come back.

Yoshitsune tried to move, but a large downdraft pinned her against the ground. She gritted her teeth to rise and got her hands beneath her. The air seemed to be getting weaker.

A vial filled with blue liquid fell out of the sky and into Uragoe’s hands. He downed the contents and the chamber turned into a tornado.

“Without your Father’s bow or his armor, you are so unbearably weak,” Uragoe sneered. He plucked on the bow’s string and played a pained sound on it. “You lost so many levels, Yoshitsune. How is it that you managed to get out of that tar pit when so many stronger than you failed? What did you give away to that dragon to pull yourself from the muck? Your loyalty? Your possessions? Your body?”

“Uragoe! Hurry the fuck up before I drop you from the party!” The weasel shouted.

Like the kid that did the most work in the group project, the weasel was still saddled with the lion’s share of the boss fight. Bonnie’s spells seemed almost entirely supportive in nature. Her water bubbles scrubbed muck away from the Drowned Giant to create perfect targets for the weasel to stab.

But, there was only so much a pair could accomplish by themselves. A massive health bar only dropped by a little at a time while waves of reanimated, tar-covered beast skeletons flowed from underneath the mammoth. Constant distractions prevented the weasel from progressing.

Uragoe clicked his tongue and sent a bladed blast of air towards the wave of beasts. The weasel had to tumble while Bonnie dropped to the ground. Large chunks of tar and flesh were cleaved out of the beasts.

“Ask and you shall receive. Hang in there just a longer Culuur, I’ll be but a moment,” Uragoe laughed before he looked my way. “What do you think, dragon? You’re stronger than Jarek and I’m stronger than little Yoshitsune here. The fact that you are watching this so impassively shows me you don’t like the woman. Why don’t we team up and finish this fight? I’ll even give you Jarek’s reward.”

I could feel Yoshitsune staring at me helplessly under the power of the tyrannical wind above her. Just a single word of agreement from me could shatter her like a baseball through a window. What face would she make if I cast her aside for the one that wounded her? Would it make her more potent or would she collapse?

“That depends if you are actually stronger than Yoshitsune,” I answered, much to the surprise of both of them.

“What?” Uragoe spat. “What do you mean if I’m actually stronger? Was your sight stolen from you?”

“Yoshitsune,” I said as I looked directly into her grimacing face. “What the fuck are you doing? When did you become so goddamn stupid that you are letting yourself get the shit beat out of you like this? What happened to you?”

“It seems that I haven’t impressed you yet,” Uragoe remarked while shaking his head. He summoned a mass of blades in the air to make it look like a guillotine convention. “Very well, I will show you what I am actually capable of.”

As Uragoe sent the blades down atop Yoshitsune’s back, a bolt of lightning burst out from her finger. Shavings of rock flew up from the ground as the windy saw blades cleaved deep into the bedrock.

However, Yoshitsune was no longer there. She appeared at the other end of the strike. Her hair stood up from the static like a startled cat. She took a deep breath, the hands covering her body settling down from their angry flares. A look of tranquil determination crossed her face as the blade of her sword slid back into her sleeve.

“What are you trying to accomplish without your weapon, Yoshitsune?” Uragoe called out as he redirected the wind towards her.

“I don’t need it,” she declared as she bolted out of the wind.

She fully extended her left arm while she kept the right one bent and tight to her chest. A curved arc of lightning shot out from either side of her left hand. Her right hand pulled a long arc of lightning backwards like an arrow. Sparks danced off her finger as she pulled the invisible string taut. Fingers from her additional hands joined in stretching the bow string further and further back.

With a rumbling crack, the light burst across the chamber and struck Uragoe directly in the chest. The demon’s mouth leaked blood and his health shrank.

He made wide, sweeping motions with both of his arms. A powerful crosswind formed in front of him. Menacing blades slashed in either direction, prepared to turn anything that crossed it into mincemeat.

More bolts of lightning came from the tips of Yoshitsune’s fingers. With the bow as a conduit, her accuracy went up considerably. The strikes kept hitting the same location on Uragoe’s torso. A small wisp of smoke flowed off of the spot on the armor. She summoned blue potions of her own and quickly chugged down the contents like shots of tequila at a party. The empty bottles dissipated and the electricity ramped back up with angry snapping like a detached powerline.

Uragoe pushed the wind forwards to spread his windy blender over the entire chamber. I prepared to take my own evasive maneuvers when Yoshitsune burst through the wood chipper like a mad woman. A red vial was clenched between her teeth and the contents were quickly downed as her Kimono was ripped to near shreds and her limbs were covered in cuts. Only the potion’s effects prevented her from being turned into premium cuts hung up in the windows of butchers.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Her blade cracked out of her tattered sleeve and slashed in a quick motion. Uragoe’s hands, severed from their wrists, flew in opposite directions. Yoshitsune then plunged her blade into him. Uragoe croaked as his throat was turned into a shish kabob. Blood leaked from the wound while the long-nosed demon attempted to speak.

“Yoshitsune!” Uragoe screeched in a strained voice.

Yoshitsune’s body glowed as she unleashed a burst of lightning directly into Uragoe’s neck. Like a decapitation with dynamite, the demon’s head shot into the chamber’s ceiling while viscera sprayed Yoshitsune’s nude torso. The last beats of his heart squirted blood from the jagged, messy wound of his neck.

I moved from my place upon the ground and moved towards the heaving demon. She had not moved an inch. Her blade now extended to a body that had flopped to the ground like a stunned fish.

“This was the beautiful ending I hoped for,” I complimented as I looked down at the obliterated body.

“Thank you,” she said before releasing a long, loud sigh of relief. “You helped me recover my sanity. I would have died like a fool. Now, let’s bind them up.”

I moved from body to body to weigh down their corpses with heavy chains. We could not allow them even the smallest opportunity for retribution when their souls returned to flesh.

“So, what are we going to do with them?” I asked while pointing towards Culuur and Bonnie.

The mammoth’s health had barely gone down further and large puddles of steaming sludge ate away at Culuur’s boots. Bonnie’s arms quivered from holding them out for so long. They had hit an insurmountable wall with their remaining power. If we just waited it out, they would die on their own. My only concern was whether we could do it ourselves, especially with Yoshitsune’s current condition.

“You only have two options, weasel. Would you like to join forces with us, or would you rather try to keep us from stealing it from you?” Yoshitsune called out with a confident smile. “I do not care either way.”

Culuur, pressed by the beasts that surrounded him, spat into the ground and pointed a finger at each of us. An invitation glowed in my eyes.

You are invited to Culuur’s Dungeon Party (Party will be disbanded upon completion of Dungeon)

After accepting and giving Yoshitsune the opportunity to down a couple more potions, we made our way to the front lines to relieve our newfound allies. Yoshitsune shot a bolt of lightning at the rainstorm that Bonnie desperately tried to maintain. It arced through each of the droplets of water and struck all the beasts beneath, killing them all in a singular move.

A wad of venom left my mouth and hit the Drowned Giant. The fur sizzled and the mammoth’s health trickled a bit downwards.

It opened its mouth and it trumpeted out apocalypse from its snout. We all jumped back while Bonnie created a spray of water to stave off as much of the flaming tar wave that she could. The liquid flowed beneath me and scorched my toes.

“Its hide is highly thick,” Culuur announced. “I’ve been stabbing it for what feels like hours and this is all the progress that I have to show for it.”

I frowned. My acid, Yoshitsune’s lightning, and Culuur’s spear barely wounded it. Of the three, my acid was surprisingly the most effective and that was mostly by virtue of the short poison effect that it generated. Either this battle was more suitable for ten times our number or there was something critical to the strategy that we were missing.

Even if I were to stand and spray it, I would run out of health due to the combined damage from my spellcasting cost and the burning from the tar that kept flowing onto the floor. If there was a way to generate a high amount of poison stacks, there might be a faster way to finish this.

I hopped to avoid another splash of tar to see Jarek’s corpse bob in the tar wave. The burns to his body from the tar combined with the burns from my toxic blood.

“Yoshitsune!” I called out, a look of inspiration on my face. “I need you to cut off my arm! I have an idea!”

All three of my party members looked at me as though I had grown a second head.

“What are you, insane?” Culuur demanded. “I didn’t invite you to this party to watch you butcher yourself in front of me!”

“Alright, Ishmael-san.” Yoshitsune agreed with a determined nod. She held out her blade and steadily raised it over her head. “I’ll trust your plans.”

Yoshitsune’s blade dug into my elbow and a rush of beautiful pain made my stomach twist with sickness. I felt the sword’s edge catch the bone before the sensation of the weapon disappeared entirely. My left forearm splashed into the shallow pool of tar and the strangest feelings of tingling flowed through my severed nerves.

I lifted my severed limb in my right hand and readied it.

“Now, hurt it.” I ordered the rest of my party.

Since the deed was already done, they seemed more willing to see the rest of the plan through. Culuur and Yoshitsune delivered a punishing amount of damage into the spots of the body that Bonnie cleared for them. Another decent chunk of damage took the beast to below half. But, it was clear that everyone was running low on mana.

The Drowned Giant once again opened its mouth and started its trumpet. In that split moment, I hurled my arm into the mammoth’s massive maw. The limb slipped through the beast’s mouth and down its throat.

A poison ticker appeared above the Drowned Giant’s health bar. As my blood leaked into the beast, the more counters appeared until the creature threw up tar in our direction.

My melted arm flew out its mouth and slapped against the opposite side of the chamber. However, the damage had already been done. The mammoth’s health plummeted from half to a third to under a quarter before the short timer stopped.

“Good job,” Culuur reluctantly complemented. “Since you sacrificed your arm, the rest of us will try to bring it down the rest of the way.”

“Who said I was down a limb permanently?” I asked with a taunting smile.

Flesh bubbled and bulged from the wound on my elbow. Formless meat spilled out from the opening, hanging limply from the joint until bones began to harden inside. Black scales hardened overtop while the entire limb burned from the regrowth and reconnection of all the nerves.

I summoned and downed a Potion of Recovery to reclaim the health that was lost from my gambit.

“Alright, Yoshitsune, let’s do it again.”

Three more removals of my arm along with the attacks of Yoshitsune and Culuur were enough to deplete the beast of its life. With an ear-piercing trumpet, tar exploded from the beast’s body that spread an inescapable tidal wave of the hazardous liquid across the rocks.

As the black liquid smothered us, foreign emotions hung in the liquid and invaded our minds. I saw Gunner slip into the tar, his little hands reaching out in desperation to be saved. I could not move my body to assist him and had to helplessly watch Miranda wade out into the liquid to extract him. But, she did not resurface. To my horror, I watched Kenny run out into the depths after them only to meet the same fate.

It was only then that I was freed of the binds that held me in place. I sprinted out into the tar without any care for my own body. I reached my arms down into the awful liquid, but could not find any of them. Without any other ideas, I dunked my entire body into the depths to futilely reach around for them.

Congratulations! You have slain the Drowned Giant! Rewards are being calculated based on individual contribution.

My eyes opened to see the tar had disappeared. All that remained was a graveyard of bones of numerous animals. In the center, the immense mammoth skeleton sat in the center of several small mammoth skeletons.

“Fuck this,” I spat, clutching my chest in response to the very real emotions I just felt.

It was not long until the rest woke up from their own nightmares. Screams and calls for people that would never be seen again escaped their lips. They dry heaved themselves back into control to find the same sight that I beheld.

“I offer you my condolences, pitiable mother who lost everything,” Culuur said with a bow before he turned to look at me. “I won’t thank you for helping us, but I will also not hold a grudge against you. If we find each other at another Dungeon, let’s help each other out.”

“Sure,” I replied with a nod.

Against the far wall, the rocks shifted and rumbled to reveal a Portal that would lead us back to the main world. Culuur reached down for Bonnie’s weeping body. He helped her up and assisted her towards the exit.

“Let’s finish this,” Yoshitsune said.

I nodded and held onto the chains of Uragoe and Jarek. With a loud grinding sound, I pulled them towards the Portal. I was ready to watch what fate Yoshitsune would inflict upon these wretched traitors.

However, as the chamber turned to white and we were to return to Tar Gardens, an unexpected message appeared in my eye.

image [https://i.imgur.com/AEF5BKN.jpeg]

Invitation!

You have been noticed by some individuals who wish to meet you.

This invitation cannot be rejected.

You are being transported to a new location.