“Okay,” Tailyn replied with a reluctant nod. He couldn’t say no to Valanil when she asked like that.
“There we go,” the herbalist said with a smile. “Send in the dragon.”
Attack!
Li-Ho-Dun wiggled its tail obediently and surged forward. As soon as it flew into the cave, a message popped up:
You entered into combat with Isr Kale’s essence.
Phase 1.
“Mages,” boomed the rich, chesty voice. The monster could speak. “Even after my death, you still give me no rest.”
“We’re not here to fight you, General!” Forian yelled as he followed the dragon into the cave. “We need information.”
“Information?!” the boss replied, enraged. “How dare you ask me for information? You’re going to pay for that!”
The general’s face darkened, he froze, and Tailyn, who had walked in behind Forian, sensed something was wrong.
“Get out of the way!” the boy yelled as he ran over to the wall. Valia and Valanil reacted fast enough to avoid getting hit, a wide swath of stone darkening and swirling with blackness. The pictures on the wall that was in the targeted sector disappeared into the charge of dark energy. Apparently, that was the necrotic strike, and Tailyn swallowed hard. But his dragon struck back right then. As the fire hit the boss, he whirled around and lashed out with something that didn’t look at all like a limb. It was a tentacle. There was one growing out of his back, which was why they hadn’t seen it at first, and it turned out to only be one of several. They reached out toward Li-Ho-Dun, forcing the agile dragon to bob and weave as it pulled away. And while the monster didn’t go after it, he turned with it to let his tentacles go to work. They were just long enough to reach the far side of the cave.
“Don’t just stand there; attack!” Forian barked as he hit the boss with a dark strike, his most powerful card. A black ball the size of his head formed in front of him and rushed off toward the target.
“I want to know where you hid the dragon’s blood!” the mage yelled as soon as the sphere hit the boss’s back. The latter staggered and turned slowly toward Forian, a move that saved the dragon. Meanwhile, Tailyn was stunned to hear what Forian was looking for. Li-Ho-Dun even crashed into a wall, not expecting the strange command from its master, though the boy pulled himself together and got his companion back into the air. His ears were focused on every word, however. Suddenly, it made sense why the god hadn’t told him to share his mission with his mentor — the mage already had it.
“You mages will never get to the storage! We kept you away back then, and we’ll keep you away now. Servants, I summon you! Come punish the game’s animals!”
Even as his tentacles kept tracking the dragon, the boss reached out toward the entrance to the cave, and ghosts began to appear there. The usual guardsmen, the only difference was they were semi-transparent, the same as the boss himself. Tailyn hit them with ten waves of fire before realizing it was pointless. The creatures had the same immunity to magic their predecessors had.
“Tailyn, get more potions ready!” Valanil yelled, handing Valia some of her supply. “We’ll take care of them.”
“Don’t even think about it, woman! No potions! Let the dragon attack them, get their attention, and lead them into the necrotic energy. The guardsmen can’t fly, so they’ll burn up. Herbalist, you have your job — do that!”
Valanil hissed, looking ready to leap at the mage, but she said nothing. In the meantime, Tailyn adjusted the dragon’s flight path to pull it above the fire and fly past the guardsmen. The summoned squad had just entered the cave when the shadow flashed by them, its stream of fire cutting down four of them on the first pass. None were very strong against the dragon. Forgetting the group of humans, the guardsmen dashed off after the flying target, the whole group soon finding themselves dissolving in the necrotic energy. A flash of light, and a few fairly wide pathways appeared along the floor, only the guardsmen were nowhere to be found.
“You don’t have a shot, mages!” the boss yelled as he threw his tentacles at Forian. At least, they were aimed at where Forian had just been — the mage had leaped nimbly to the side. The tentacles corrected their mistake, but Forian dodged again, his yell filling the cave.
“Student, distract him! Come on!”
“On it!” The dragon flashed past the boss’s face, and history began to repeat itself. Tailyn’s companion dodged the tentacles as it flew around the room; the group jumped to the side every time they saw the boss’s face darken; guardsmen periodically appeared to carve convenient passageways through the necrotic energy. Then, the sequence repeated itself.
The only change was that the boss stopped talking so much, just throwing out the stray line about how mages all had to die. And that went on until Valia and Valanil both threw up their hands.
“My cards are out. All I have left is my summons.”
Forian turned a withering gaze on the useless pair. It was hard for him to imagine being at that level and still having such mediocre cards — there was no preparation to speak of on their part.
“Get back and wait there. Student, what’s your status?”
“Thirty or forty charges,” Tailyn estimated without taking his eyes off his dragon. The boss was about to activate his ability, and he needed to be ready to distract the guardsmen.
“Attack! Let’s finish this.”
The boy did just that, sending fireballs sizzling off toward the boss. Since Raptor was telling him fire was the boss’s weakness, he decided to start with them. The temperature in the cave began to rise — twenty shots was enough to turn the place into an oven. Unfortunately, that didn’t appear to bother the boss at all, as he kept right on chasing the dragon. The same wasn’t true of the guardsmen, at least. As soon as the next set appeared and set off after the dragon, they dropped to the ground and melted without even getting to the necrotic energy.
“Stop it!” Forian yelled. “You aren’t getting through. Pull back!”
Just then, the boss decided it was time for some more dark matter. Turning toward the mage, he spat out the black slime, and while Forian was able to leap to the side in time, he went the wrong way and found himself caught between two patches of the stuff. If Tailyn had the guardsmen to lead around by the nose, he could have cut a path through, but they were already dead. Forian couldn’t move. But just as the boss’s tentacles reached out to crush the mage, a flask smashed against the general’s head, leaving behind a thick layer of ice.
“Again!” Forian called when he saw what had happened. Tailyn’s favorite elixir was the perfect tool — the boss couldn’t move.
“That was my last one — I’m out!”
“Make more! Divide your consciousness. One part can head into your workshop; the other can stay out here in reality.”
“They teach that in the fifth year!” Valanil shot back indignantly. “He’s just a child!”
“And he’ll be a dead child if he doesn’t do it right now. I need twenty flasks of freeze, another twenty of acid. Do it, Tailyn. You have integration, so learn how to use it! You can hear voices from the outside world when you’re in the workshop, right? Latch on to those sensations and leave part of your consciousness here.”
Tailyn couldn’t help but remember jumping into his workshop while Olsen had been talking about the lixes and where they’d come from. Even inside, he’d still been listening to the function, unwilling to miss anything. He focused all his attention on the workshop button and the control panel for the dragon. His consciousness blurred. Maintaining his mind in the outside world didn’t work, and he found himself in his lab, though part of the boy did stay behind to fly the dragon around the wall. That was a good thing, too — the boss soon unfroze and went back to chasing the nimble creature. The boy’s head began to pound, his nose started bleeding from the stress, and his legs shook, but Tailyn just clutched the table for support. He needed those elixirs.
Twenty freezes. Twenty acids. Blood spraying around the lab.
His mentor’s order complete. By the time Tailyn got back out into the real world, his consciousness was just about gone. His head buzzing, he collapsed to his knees, dropping his load out in front of him. His dragon smacked into a wall and dropped to the ground. With a laugh, the boss reached out to finally grab the little bugger and finish it off.
“Come back, my boy. We need you!” Valanil’s hand dropped onto the boy from behind him, and a wave of warmth flooded through him. Pulling his eyes open with an effort, Tailyn stared at the frozen boss — the herbalist had a great arm. The dragon jerked and pulled at the boss’s motionless tentacles in an effort to break loose, but nothing worked. It was stuck.
“Acid isn’t doing anything! Fire isn’t, either!” Valanil yelled, and Forian appeared next to her. One of the sections of necrotic energy had presumably disappeared.
“How is he?”
“Alive if not for long with a mentor like you,” the herbalist muttered. “Kids can’t split their consciousness — they’re not ready! You just about got him killed.”
“But I didn’t. Okay, we need to retreat — we can’t get through that thing’s shield.”
“What, your cards are empty, too?” Valanil shot back sarcastically as she hurled another flask at the boss, who was beginning to move. Just then, the dragon’s fire came off cooldown, and Tailyn used it to cut through the tentacles. Li-Ho-Dun wrenched itself free, though its freedom came at a cost — a deep gash had appeared along one flank. The companion’s personal shield was gone.
“Here, let me heal it.” Valanil placed a hand on the dragon to stop the bleeding. Of course, the herbalist’s nose began to bleed instead, and she had to drink a mana flask.
“What a useless healer,” Forian said. “Hurting yourself to heal others is the last thing you need in battle. Okay, pull back! We can’t win this.”
“No,” someone said, and everyone stared in surprise at Tailyn. The boy was calm and focused. “I need time. Don’t throw any more ice — we won’t need it.”
The dragon flew back into the air, circling close to the boss. Ten seconds later, the ice was gone, and the general resumed chasing after the boy’s nimble companion as if nothing had happened. The group waited silently to see what Tailyn had thought up. The boy was controlling his dragon, though he wasn’t off by the wall that time. He was pushing the dragon right up against the boss’s head. Finally, the latter stopped and summoned its army.
“Take care of them with elixirs,” Tailyn said without pulling himself away from his dragon. Flasks flew by, but he ignored them completely. There was going to be no split consciousness. No, it was like Tailyn had become the dragon, dodging back and forth between the beast’s deadly tentacles. Finally, the moment he’d been waiting for arrived.
“Dodge!” Forian yelled. The boss turned toward the group, ready to spit another charge of necrotic energy, only the boy didn’t go anywhere. The creature’s face darkened, and he opened his mouth to finish the battle, but that was when the dragon attacked.
The boss had a weakness to fire. Raptor had said as much. But the flames couldn’t beat through his shield — neither magic nor the dragon had worked. And that meant they had to get the fire somewhere without a shield. Right into the creature’s gullet, for example.
The stream of primordial fire hit the boss’s open mouth and mixed there with the necrotic energy. In fact, Li-Ho-Dun’s attack was so powerful that the boss swallowed what he’d been planning on sending in the group’s direction. The dragon had rammed the energy back down into the creature with its all-consuming flames.
Three seconds ticked by, and Tailyn pulled the dragon away. If his plan didn’t work, they were definitely going to need to run.
“The guardsmen — they’re gone!” Valia called happily. “It worked!”
It was true. The summoned creatures had disappeared. Meanwhile, the boss’s tentacles dangled helplessly, the general himself crashing heavily to his knees a few seconds later. His semi-transparent body showed how the fire and black slime filled him, making him ever so vulnerable.
“Summon!” Forian yelled as the cave suddenly became home to ten level twenty-five panthers. Valia used her jungle call. Next to her, a level thirty-five bukamonster appeared — Valanil wasn’t about to be outdone by the girl. The boss jerked as he tried to fight off the encroaching horde, but the beasts tore him to pieces. And while the black goo oozing from his wounds killed off the panthers, it wasn’t enough for all of them, and the bukamonster finished the job by pancaking the monster’s head with a single blow.
Congratulations!
You won the single combat.
Isr Kale’s Sarcophagus cleared.
Crystals +3 (10).
***
Experience received by your companion: +200 (to next level: 15).
***
You beat the dungeon in a group of four or fewer people. Reward level increased by 1.
***
Valanil Revolt receives complete level IV outfit.
Valia Levor receives complete level IV outfit.
Forian Tarn receives complete level IV outfit.
Tailyn Vlashich receives complete level III outfit for his companion.
***
Named item level +1 (5).
Attention! The next named item level will increase parameter requirements by 15 (to 20). Be careful and make sure you're ready ahead of time.
A stone sarcophagus with a transparent lid appeared where the boss had just been. Inside, there was a skeleton wearing ancient armor that shone like it was brand new, a weapon in its hands, and strange accessories strapped on everywhere else. It hit Tailyn that everything was named and therefore couldn’t be sold, which was a shame — he wouldn’t have minded the extra coins. But that wasn’t all. Isr Kale’s essence insisted on having the last word, so a ghost appeared above the ground as soon as the beasts and the bukamonster disappeared as though they’d been dipped in necrotic energy. The general looked much more human. Not only was he the right size, his tentacles were also gone.
“You defeated me in battle, mages, but you won’t win the war. You’ll never get the dragon’s blood! It’s hidden securely, and even though the provost stole my journal, it doesn’t have coordinates of the cache in it. Earth will belong to humans, not the game’s animals!”
Mission update: Search for Coordinates. You found out that the key to Lavr Nalin’s notebook is written down in Isr Kale’s journal, which is kept by the academy provost. Get access to the journal.
Mission complete: Search. You beat the dungeon and found out how it works: there are multiple rounds followed by a boss at the end. Your group received a reward for completing it.
Crystal +1 (11).
Forian stared at the sarcophagus and tried to swallow his rage. Even the four levels he’d picked up weren’t enough to quell the fire burning in his chest — all he wanted to do was grab his staff and smash the ancient’s coffin into a million pieces. What was he supposed to tell the dean? That Keran had died in vain? That the search the dean had been working on for hundreds of years was impossible? The only clue they had as to the whereabouts of the dragon’s blood was a dead end. Even as a ghost, the soldier had refused to give up the secret.
“Don’t touch that,” Valanil said when she saw Valia reaching to open the lid. “It’s loaded with traps to keep out people like you, and I don’t think Tailyn would have any better luck. Something’s off about those bones. Mage, want to try getting through the protection?”
“No,” Forian replied. “I’m not good enough for that, though we aren’t going to just leave it. Tailyn, I need five Alron potions. Here are the coins.”
Valanil didn’t dare argue with the mage, though everything inside her revolted against how he was about to treat someone who had saved the planet. And while the boy followed his mentor’s instructions without hesitation, the herbalist noticed him and Valia exchange an odd glance. Too odd. The kids had a shared secret that had something to do with the general, and the woman filed
that information away.
Everyone was going to pay sooner or later. And that included Tailyn.
The boy himself was trying to distract himself with his updated companion. The armor had come at exactly the right time, boosting the creature’s shield significantly. Not only that, but it reduced the cooldown time for its attack by 50%, meaning it could breathe fire every fifteen seconds. If it had had that kind of armor before the battle started… It wouldn’t have been a competition.
But really, Tailyn was frustrated. Everyone in the group had gotten a level four suit, and despite the fact that he’d come up with and executed the winning plan, all he’d gotten was an update for his companion. With that said, he didn’t share his feelings even with Valia, as he was worried about how she might respond. The girl was far too emotional and unpredictable. She very well could have thrown her loot at him, pouting and insisting he take it when he declined, which he would have regardless. Vargot was better.
Forest of Desire (The Alchemist Book #2): LitRPG Series Page 32
