Though Blake tried to stop her, Kerri burst out of the viewing room and onto the suspended metal platforms that hung all around the perimeter of the massive room filled with murky water. The sound of her voice echoed all through the room, and the result was instantaneous.

Water began to churn. The prime mother rock crab was roused from her slumber. The water frothed and raged as an army of smaller rock crabs emerged from the murky depths below.

“Kerri!” Samuel called after her, but it was too late. Kerri was already running across one of the steel platforms, toward a ladder that would take her down to Randall.

From what Blake could see from his vantage point, Randall was not alone. There were three others stuck in a cluster of resin in the same place, and they appeared to still be alive as well.

Randall’s eyes flew open when he heard Kerri’s voice, but his mouth was covered in resin, which stopped him from speaking or calling out.

Blake still had about a quarter of an hour left on his Stone Slasher Golem summon, and he tasked that monster with defending Kerri as she headed toward Randall and the rest of the lost expedition.

The golem grumbled in acknowledgment before it also ran along the suspended steel platforms after Kerri. The swords at the end of its arms carved through crab shells as it ran.

Blake’s golem was still only roughly human sized, so it did have a little bit of trouble with some of the larger rock crabs. However, the crabs were so ungainly and top heavy that Blake and his monster could knock them off the platforms and keep the crabs from overwhelming them.

Sarah stayed with David who was still squeezing his eyes and mouth closed. Sarah placed her hands on David’s head and aimed. She told him when to open his eyes and close his eyes, and every time his Flare Beam swept along in a line, it absolutely melted the shells of any of the rock crabs in his way.

Blake decided to trust his intuition and he summoned the Boulder Crusher card. The moment he played that card, the anima motes formed into a massive hulking minotaur creature wielding an enormous stone hammer.

Monster: Minotaur Crusher

Level: 5

Evolution Stage: Advanced

Affinity: Earth

Strength: 140

Toughness: 110

Agility: 70

Magic Power: 70

Personality: Proud, Slow, Brutal

Traits:

Brute

Beastkin Form

Hammer Wielder

Savage

Past Evolutions: Minotaur (Rock Smasher)

Future Evolutions: [Unknown]

The agility of this card was fairly low, but the attack score was high for a Level 5 monster. His Berserker Wolf had only had a Strength score of 120 at the same level. This kind of card needed a slow-moving enemy to really be effective. Luckily for Blake, his target was made of rock and the size of a small island.

The rock crab mother was so big that it had trouble just turning around in this room. Part of the creature was still underwater, but trapped in some way which limited its movements. It had two massive pincers that it lifted out of the water and tried to capture the survivors with.

As Blake summoned the power of his Crusher Minotaur, he felt a rush of energy coursing through him. The card imbued him with immense strength, slowing his movements but augmenting his muscle mass.

Blake commanded his minotaur to leap down and attack the rock crab prime and keep it off of Kerri. The minotaur leaped down from the steel platforms and onto the walkway that led around the bottom of the room.

The walkways around the room were absolutely teeming with smaller rock crabs, and even though Blake himself rushed into battle after Kerri to help the other survivors, he still looked back at his new minotaur monster to see how it was faring.

Once he saw it in action, he realized that he had absolutely nothing to worry about. While the minotaur was slower, every attack it landed completely devastated whatever enemy it focused on.

The massive hammer, when swung in a horizontal arc, took out multiple crabs with one single cleave attack. For the bigger targets with the harder shells, an overhead strike slammed into the monsters and cracked their armor like they were made of plastic.

The sounds that accompanied the destruction of these rock crabs simultaneously brought a smile to Blake’s face and made him a little sick to his stomach. Every bellow of his minotaur was followed by a sickening crunch, then a wet splat.

While his Crusher Minotaur focused on cleaning away as many of the tiny rock crabs, Blake ran to catch up with his Stone Slasher Golem and Kerri to help clear the resin away from the survivors.

They’d told Blake that Randall himself had a Rock Crusher card, a lower version of the Boulder Crusher card that summoned Blake’s minotaur. Freeing him could help prevent this fight from becoming a disaster.

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Blake thought he saw a glint of malevolent intelligence in the black eyes at the end of the stalks protruding from the rock crab mother’s face. Its mandibles bubbled and frothed as it tried to decide which of these tiny little humans were more of a threat. A claw lifted out of the water, rising high above Blake.

“Watch out, claw incoming!” Blake called out as the claw came crashing down.

Metal bent and concrete cracked, but thankfully they all made it. However, that just made the massive crab even angrier.

It prepared for another strike, this time commanding its minions to herd Blake into a corner so it wouldn’t miss. Blake commanded his minotaur to launch an attack directly on the crab prime mother so it would take the focus from the survivors to his monster.

The good thing about summoned monsters was that they were ultimately disposable. It wasn’t like his cards themselves were destroyed if the monsters fell in battle.

The minotaur bellowed as it leaped into battle, swinging its Boulder Crusher against the crab’s shell again and again.

Cracking of the rocky shell echoed throughout the chamber, and the massive crab let out an alien sound half hiss, half scream. The bubbles at its mandibles frothed furiously as it focused its attention on the minotaur.

“Now’s our chance, let’s get these guys free!” Blake said.

He started tearing at the resin holding survivors in place. He took particular pleasure in crushing the tiny little rock crab eggs that were just waiting to hatch so that they could eat these people.

Kerri and Blake worked together to free Randall first. Kerri ripped the resin away from his face so he could talk again, and the first thing he did was complain.

“Ow! That hurt, Kerri! couldn’t you have been a little bit more gentle?” Randall asked.

“I’m so glad to see you’re alive,” Kerri said, not rising to respond to Randall’s joke.

“You have to free my right arm next. If I can get my hand on my deck of cards, I can empower myself and help. Who’s this guy?” Randall nodded toward Blake.

“You see that crazy minotaur monster over there that’s fighting on our side? That’s one of Blake’s cards.”

“You’ve got cards that can summon monsters?” Randall asked. “That’s impressive. We can talk about this later though, come on, get me out of here!”

Blake grinned as he tore away the resin holding Randall in place. It was a thick, translucent brown and made Blake think that it looked like the muddy water in the center of the room made solid.

The moment that Randall’s right arm was free he started tearing at the resin himself until he could get a hand inside his right pants pocket to withdraw his own deck of cards. He immediately played one which burst into motes of light and formed into a massive Rock Crusher hammer with a wicked pointed end at one side.

Blake noted that the hammer wielded by his minotaur didn’t have the pickaxe head on one side, but it was an evolved version. Maybe this version focused more on pure strength than utility like the Rock Crusher card.

The card itself bulked up Randall’s body to a ridiculous degree, and he almost looked like one of those bodybuilding wrestlers that you would see having choreographed fights with manufactured drama. But there was nothing fake about Randall’s strength.

He tore away the rest of the resin that was holding him in place like it was nothing. He swung his massive hammer like it was a child’s role play weapon.

“Okay, let’s get this party started. I’ve been waiting for my chance to fight back against this thing ever since I got captured,” Randall said.

Then Randall hunkered down and jumped. It was like his legs were spring loaded. He sailed onto the back of the massive rock crab and started bringing his Rock Crusher hammer down onto the crab’s thick shell.

By then, David’s flare beam power had incinerated the majority of the rock crabs on the bottom floor of the water treatment plant under Sarah’s careful guidance. Shells still sizzled from his power.

Blake ordered his Stone Slasher Golem to use the last few minutes of summoning time to kill as many of these rock crabs as he could. The dual swords of the golem kept Blake and Kerri safe while they freed the last three survivors stuck in the resin.

Some of the survivors were in better shape than others. There was another fairly muscular guy who immediately got up and helped pull the others out of the resin, but one younger fourteen or fifteen year old guy could barely stand. Extreme malnourishment and dehydration had nearly killed him.

They needed to end this fight quickly to stabilize him.

Blake commanded his golem to join the fight against the rock crab prime. He could sense his monster’s unease at being thrown at something so massive, but every little bit of damage they could do would contribute to ending this fight quickly.

Besides, the Slasher Golem would receive a huge amount of experience when they finally managed to take this monster down if it participated in the battle.

The golem monster obeyed and joined the Crusher Minotaur and Randall in battle. It leaped from the side platform onto the floating bits of resin on the surface of the water and used those as stepping stones to get closer and closer to the massive crab beast.

Once close enough, the Slasher Golem leaped into the air and sunk its blades into the soft underbelly of the creature. It used its inbuilt weapons to punch into the creature’s armor and climb it like he was an ice climber, and the monster was a glacier.

The golem had chosen a good location. The crab’s huge snapping claws tried to get both Randall and the Crusher Minotaur, but both of them managed to stay out of reach. Just like Blake’s minotaur monster, the massive crab’s claws were devastating but extremely slow.

Blake had an idea to finish things quickly.

He commanded his Crusher Minotaur to climb back over the crab’s carapace and start hacking away at the joint that held the massive claws onto the rest of the body. The minotaur started chopping away at those joints.

The rock crab mother thrashed backward and forward trying to dislodge the attackers who were now attacking it from three different angles.

But the Crusher Minotaur stood firm and weathered the storm of water and claw. Soon enough the first of those massive claws were hacked through and fell away from the body of the massive crab. It thrashed in fury and pain at the absolute indignity, but strength soon began fading from the massive beast.

The Stone Slasher Golem had managed to climb all the way up to the top to join Randall and the minotaur and was currently trying to slice deep into the monster's head cavity where Randall’s Rock Crusher had made vulnerabilities.

The Crusher Minotaur used its massive hammer to crack even more of the shell, and soon the legs of the rock crab prime mother collapsed underneath it. It fell into the murky water and caused a massive wave which washed over the entire bottom levels of the room.

Blake reached out to Kerri and the other survivors closest by to make sure they weren’t swept into a watery grave. The barrier on the walkway caught them before they were pulled into the middle of the room as the swells subsided.

Even though everyone was wet and a little bit worse for wear, a notification appeared which made them all cheer as one.

Congratulations! You have triumphed against another boss that far, far exceeded the limits of your current abilities!

How do you keep doing this? It can’t just be good luck. It has to be skill. This is yet another encounter to be incredibly proud of!

Under normal circumstances, the system would require you to emerge victorious in a specified number of ranked duels and acquire a collection of power cards before becoming eligible to participate in the Rank 4 examination.

However, given your recent success in defeating a monstrosity that even strong Rank 5 challengers would have struggled against, it is our strong recommendation that you return to New Meridia post haste and inquire about taking the exam to the next level. Again!

“Whoa, The System is saying that I can take a Rank 3 exam now? But I’m only Rank 1!” Kerri said with a grin.

“The very same thing happened to me and my friend Harry after we defeated a massive monster as well,” Blake said. “Congratulations. I’ll tell you all about the exam once we get everyone safe, so you can go and take the test but be forewarned.”

Kerri grinned. “That would be amazing. Now come on, we need to get our friends back to safety!”