The colossal hydra unleashed a bestial roar as the sound blast it had been charging was unleashed upon her, rippling through the air and disturbing the sparse ambient mana that remained. Elaria’s Kinetic Armour was able to withstand the powerful shockwave, though she was still blasted backwards a solid ten feet from the impact, her forearms throbbing from absorbing the remainder of the skill’s power.
Thankfully the monster needed a moment to regain its strength after using the sound blast twice in succession, giving Elaria some essential time to figure out a counter strategy and begin wearing down its strength. Her Resonant Mana Body made casting spells as simple as breathing, hundreds of Earthen Spikes being formed and launched at the lionsmane hydra even while she darted around the slow moving beast and tried to rack her brain for any knowledge that might be useful in the current scenario.
While the sound attack was clearly a magical skill, it likely still functioned on the basic principles of sound itself, a conclusion she’d drawn from her own experiences using magic and how it tended towards certain affinities and the way her own skills such as Firestorm and Magnetic Pull were constructed. It wasn’t information she’d needed much during her career, fragments of old science lessons in school about waves and harmonies coming back to her slowly, memories she perhaps might not remember at all if it weren’t for her hefty intelligence stat bolstering the power of her fragile human mind.
Soundwaves all operated on a specific frequency and in order to counteract or nullify a sound and reach silence you needed to produce a wave of perfectly opposing frequency. That was her main takeaway from a rather fun and interesting experiment they’d performed in one physics lesson back when she was sixteen, though it had required a lot of deep diving into portions of her memory she’d rather not have dredged up. It sounded simple in theory, just shoot an opposite sound wave back at the monster when it tried to blast her away. In practice however, it may take some experimentation before it was a reliable tactic.
In the first place, Elaria had never experienced sound magic prior to this battle with the lionsmane hydra and had a shallow understanding of how sound affinity mana would behave and act. There was only one way to find out if her plan would work, so rather than worrying about uncertainties she continued to barrage the monster with a range of spells including Earthen Spike, Earthen Hammer, Volcanic Spike and even some choice applications of Firestorm. It was having little effect on her enemy, its thick scales armouring the majority of its body and protecting it from harm, though small cuts and burns were appearing here and there, marking her slow progress towards victory.
Frustrated by its inability to catch her while she was zigzagging around the creature which struggled to turn quickly due to its four unwieldy legs and the fact that it was still getting used to bipedal movement after evolving, it opted to give up on playing her at her own game, instead whipping her with its thick tail, the strike so fast it made a crack as it split the air and shot directly for her chest. Caught off guard, she was unable to dodge in time and the blow threatened to deal some serious damage if she wasn’t able to react.
Diverting a few of the Earthen Hammers to assault the hydra’s incoming tail did little to reduce its speed, but in a high octane battle such as this every little counted. Planting her feet firmly into the ground, Elaria readied herself to receive the blow and when it made contact with her Kinetic Armour she responded instantly, redirecting all of the stored energy from the last sound blast and exploding it outwards into the monster’s tail, nullifying a majority of the destructive force behind the attack, the remainder of which she was able to handle with pure physical strength alone.
Rather than allow her opponent to regain its composure and have use of its tail as a lethal assault weapon once more, Elaria tugged on it with all her might and despite her rather solid strength stat she felt it slowly slipping from her grasp as the lionsmane hydra’s immensely powerful muscles worked against her. Actively focusing on the construct of the skill, she formed an Earthen Spike, far larger than the standard variant of the spell, before compressing it as dense as her mana would allow before she could feel resistance. The result was a huge nail of rock and earth that was as hard as granite and sharpened to a needle point that could pierce steel.
Right as she could feel her hold on the monster’s tail slipping away she released the huge Earthen Spike, driving it with as much force as she could muster through the softer flesh of the hydra’s tail and pinning it to the ground, blue blood leaking from the edges of the wound and pooling on the rocky stone below. It thrashed and roared, struggling desperately to free itself from her trap but the spike was firmly wedged into the ground and refused to budge despite the creature’s best efforts.
Realising that it wouldn’t be able to free itself anytime soon, the lionsmane hydra focused its rage on her once more, the sound blast charging up between its three heads for the third time. This time Elaria was prepared for the attack and instead of needing to focus purely on defensive measures she began to craft an entirely new construct, the makings of another skill in her repertoire. Having experienced the destructive shockwave of the monster’s spell twice already, she had a rough idea of the frequency it operated on.
If she had more time, it might have been a far more efficient idea to create a spell that would react to any incoming sound attacks and respond with the directly opposing frequency; a general purpose counter spell of sorts. However time was the one thing Elaria was not blessed with at that moment and it was the best she could do to simply form a hastily cast soundwave of her own with a frequency that roughly opposed the hydra’s skill. As the monster launched its sound blast in her direction, she made sure not to forget to reinforce her Kinetic Armour and continue peppering its battered and bruised hide with spells.
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Not wanting to face the backlash of the two spells colliding, Elaria launched her counterspell to meet her enemy’s attack halfway between them. In the moment before they struck she raised her arms to shield herself from any flying debris but to her surprise there was no explosion, in fact the eerie silence that fell over the cavern raised goosebumps all over her body. A complete and utter lack of sound was a rather disturbing phenomenon that was almost impossible to encounter in the wild; the world was a noisy place and something was always making a sound of sorts, even on the quietest and most still of nights.
The hydra was enraged at the lack of impact its spell had on the puny girl opposing it and resumed thrashing and flailing about in a futile attempt to loosen the thick spike that still pinned its tail to the ground. Taking advantage of the monster’s distraction Elaria finally started to prepare a finishing blow that would end this tedious battle once and for all, her mind keenly aware of Luna’s diminishing health as the wolf struggled to cling to life on a ledge high up in the cavern. The previously impenetrable scales had been under constant assault during their battle and Elaria spied one particularly nasty wound on the monster’s chest that was a perfect target for her plan.
Using the giant Earthen Spike that still held firm as inspiration, she now moulded a huge Volcanic Spike above her head, reaching a similar size as the other before she felt the limits of her power stopping her from compressing it further. With steady aim she launched the spike into the bleeding gash, the spike burying itself twenty centimetres deep into the lionsmane hydra’s chest, smoke rising from the sizzling flesh around the impact zone as the molten rock began to cook the monster from within.
Unfortunately she’d not managed to hit any of its vitals, otherwise it would be in far more debilitating pain than it was. Though the impact of her strategy was immediate, its cries far more desperate and pained than the raging and bestial roars it had been unleashing earlier on. For the final touch on her masterwork, Elaria began to construct a huge Earthen Hammer, following the same process she’d used to enlarge both of her spike skills to create a dense, compressed slab of stone and dirt which she launched directly at the volcanic spike, even using a localised application of Firestorm to provide an extra push.
A boom echoed through the cavern as the hammer smashed into the Volcanic Spike, smashing the molten rock and stone deep into the hydra’s chest, blood and shards of bone spurting from the wound along with the debris and dust of the shattered Earthen Hammer. There was an agonising look of surprise frozen in the monster’s eyes as it collapsed to the ground, dead and defeated. Elaria must’ve destroyed its heart with her ingenious strategy and thus even its rapid regeneration was unable to keep up. A notification she’d never seen before appeared from the Chain along with the kill box.
Level 52 Lionsmane Hydra (Evolved Dungeon Boss) has been slain!
+936 XP
Reflective Lionsmane Cloak x1
Lion Fangs x1
Fireproof Scale Mail x1
Dungeon Raid [Farrowhill Caverns] - Cleared
Difficulty: Rare
All conditions have been met, the dungeon’s exit will now appear. Due to the presence of an evolved boss, an increased reward has been provided to the successful challenger.
Reward:
+2000 XP
+1 to strength and fortitude
The rewards for defeating the boss alone were incredible, taking her up nearly two more levels as well as giving her two extraordinarily tough sounding pieces of gear, armour which she desperately needed in order to not rely so heavily on her skills and the durability of her own body. The bonus reward for the dungeon clear propelled her another couple of levels further and even provided some permanent stat boosts which was always sweet. After hastily equipping the gear without even checking the properties, she rushed to Luna and carefully carried the wolf to the glowing blue portal which had appeared in the centre of the cavern after she defeated the hydra and walked through, hoping there would be no surprises on the other side.