Chapter Two Hundred and Twenty-Two - Down With the Boss

There were plenty of altars left to break, and the boss still seemed to be in decent health, even if I could see some burns across its chest where Amaryllis had let loose against it. I didn’t doubt that those had hurt, but they weren’t crippling blows.

My attack earlier hadn’t done much, and the Fireballs had petered out almost as soon as they struck.

The boss pulled its arm back, bits of stone from the altar clinging to the limb and only falling off when water geysered out from the altar and splashed against it.

Barely even a scratch!

I glanced over to the side, noting the other two altars on this level, then back to the boss. Could I keep it distracted? It might not be super useful, but it would give my friends some time to do things.

“Hey there!” I called out, one arm waving. “You missed me.”

The boss turned its head so that its one eye stared my way, and I quickly glanced away from the maddening swirling globe. It wasn’t time to lose my mind just yet.

Shifting back, the boss raised its other arm, and presented both palms to me, like someone about to clap a mosquito out of the air, only in this case, I was taking up the role of the mosquito.

“Oh, snickerdoodles,” I swore before both hands came rushing in towards me.

I jumped to one side, sailing over the boss’s arm. I landed in a bounce that sent my sailing over the second hand. That was a chunk of stamina gone.

The hands clapped together with a huge wallop, the water coating them spraying out every which way, exactly the way I imagine I’d get splattered if I lingered there.

“Bit rude!” I called out to the boss.

Then, before it could do that again, I started running towards the next altar, past a waterfall where one of the altars above had been broken. I saw Awen running by above, hammer in hand.

“Hey, hey!” I called out as I bounced up and onto a second altar. “I’m here, big guy... or girl, I can’t actually tell.”

The boss turned, then swung an arm out at me, the entire limb going high.

I hopped off the altar and ducked down, expecting to hear stone breaking, and I did, only it wasn’t the altar but one of the pillars that had collapsed into a flurry of pieces.

“Whoa,” I said. Then I felt my eyes growing wide as a fist came rocketing down where I was.

I rolled to the side, the entire floor bouncing under me as the fist crashed down where I’d been.

“Whoa!” I shouted. “Hey! Be careful!”

It didn’t even break the altar. Annoying.

“Leave Broccoli alone!” came Awen’s cry from above a moment before a bolt thumped into the boss’s forehead and stuck there.

The monster looked up, then brought both hands up and through the floor above.

I scrambled away as the ceiling collapsed around me. At least one big stone crashed into the altar, cracking the top of it and unleashing a wash of water.

I wanted to cheer, but that caught in my throat when I saw Awen stumble near the edge, then trip.

“Awen!”

I jumped forwards, ignoring the monster’s arms as he pulled them back.

Awen was falling, eyes wide and limbs scrambling for purchase even as everything continued to fall apart.

I reached out for her, but something hard and heavy banged my head. I grunted, but my hand still wrapped around something a moment before I crashed tummy-first onto the uneven floor. Rocks dug into my legs and hips where they skidded off my armour.

The thing I held onto tugged, pulling me ahead a bit.

I blinked, clearing the stars from my vision.

Awen was suspended below me, one hand gripping her crossbow, the rest of her dangling down like a wet towel on a clothesline on a windy day.

That’s what I held onto, one of the metal arms at the end of the bow, currently straightened a bit since it wasn’t loaded. “Hang on!” I shouted.

“I... I’m slipping!” she screamed.

The boss growled and shifted.

“Awen!”

I could see Bastion and Howard running toward her from the floor below. They’d catch her!

Then Awen slipped. She didn’t even yell as she tumbled right past the floor below and crashed into the water with a huge splash.

“Awen!”

Howard dove in, a second, smaller splash right next to where Awen had fallen.

“No!”

I scrambled to my feet, still holding onto Awen’s bow. I stared at it for a moment, then tossed it back. Where was my spade?

Bastion paused by the edge of the floor below. “The altars!” he shouted.

“Yeah—no! If we break them, they’ll be buried.”

“There’s one left above,” he said.

“Right.”

I spun around, saw my spade, and picked it up as I rushed by. I had to blink hard to clear my vision; it was very wet.

The boss roared again and it bent down a little to attack my friends below. I was really, really not fond of this boss. The last altar was across the room, which meant either going around, or through the boss. With my current mood...

My sneakers gripped onto the edge of the floor and I launched myself at the boss with the meanest roar I could muster. I was kind of disappointed when my roar sounded more like a kitten yawning.

The boss probably didn’t expect anyone to deliver a straight, stamina-empowered kick right in its face.

The boss had to be a hundred times my weight, but I had a lot of miffed-off energy to bleed.

Its face tentacles reached up, and one of them grabbed me around the waist as I was falling back.

Perfect!

I poured magic into a blast of Cleaning magic, a blast that would have been strong even before I hit Rank-S with the skill. Now the ball of swirling magic spun around like a snowglobe in a paint mixer, hundreds of motes of magic zipping around in a tight ball that I fired forwards into the monster’s face.

The water wicked away, and left the boss’s face perfectly clean. It blinked its single now-dry eye, seeming confused.

Then I fired more Cleaning magic to the other side, and the magic tore into the roots filling the monster’s disfigured eye-hole.

The roots melted apart, the greenish plant-life turning brown before fading into motes of dust, and with them gone, there was now an unfilled maze of holes left in the boss’s face that quickly started to bleed. The boss’s moan hinted that it hadn’t enjoyed that.

“Amaryllis! Zap its face!”

I saw my harpy friend, all wet and really annoyed-looking, running to the edge of the floor below.

The tentacle gripping me raised me up, and a larger mouth opened up, the tentacles around it shifting aside like noodly curtains. The boss had a beak instead of a mouth, one filled with jagged, quill-like teeth inside.

Amaryllis’ lightning crashed into the boss’s face, digging into its blubbery features and singing them black.

The boss growled and threw me towards its open beak.

I kicked out, one foot on either end of the beak to pin me in place. I flipped my spade around, and started hacking at the tentacle holding me with the sharp end while my free hand pointed down the monster’s throat. “Fireball!”

The Fireball I cast wasn’t big or impressive, but it did blow apart that dangly thing at the back of the monster’s throat.

It screamed and flung me back.

I kicked and flipped, only just managing to land on my feet before I stumbled and rolled and finally ended up bumping against the far wall. “Ouch,” I muttered.

I was on the top floor, I realized.

Shaking my head, I picked myself up, then took in the scene. The monster was finally looking a bit rough. It was coughing and sputtering, and its voice was now all sorts of rough. I bet it couldn’t scream its mind-flay-y scream anymore, which was a great bonus.

I started to run towards the last altar left on this floor, then I stumbled and tripped as the muscles in my legs twinged. I gasped and grit my teeth. I didn’t have time to be hurt. I had to help, and we had to save...

Bastion flashed past the boss, circling around the back of its head in a quick upwards spiral with his sword leaving a long slice wherever he passed by the monster. The boss tried to swat him out of the air, but they were blind swings that Bastion avoided with ease. “She’s out of the water,” he said. “Break the altar!”

“Right!” I said.

Awen was safe!

I rushed to the last altar on this floor, then whacked it with my spade. Then again and again, ignoring the soreness in my arms until a fountain of water burst from the stone.

The ceiling above boomed, and I saw a crack running across the middle of it. Not enough to bring it down yet, but a good sign. There were other cracks too, all of them meeting in the middle above the hole where the boss was.

How many altars were left?

I searched around, but there were waterfalls of water all over, and piles of broken stone where the boss had rampaged. Then I saw it, on the floor below, one last altar.

I wanted to jump to it, but I was a bit hurt, and I wasn’t sure if that would be clever.

Instead, I ran as fast as I could manage, with a few hops for speed to the stairs, then down the entire staircase until I was down a floor. I arrived just as Amaryllis and Howard came up from the second floor from a stairwell opposite the one I was using.

They had Awen, her arms thrown over their shoulders and coughing hard.

Coughing meant she was alive!

I grinned, then let the grin fall as I watched the boss. Bastion was doing good work distracting the boss, keeping its attention on himself.

Good. I just had to do my part!

I moved to the altar, bent over a bit, then shoved into it shoulder-first. I growled and dug my feet in, pushing as hard as I could until the stone shifted forwards.

It crashed down with a heavy thump, and I earned myself a face-full of water for my trouble. I spluttered and stepped back.

The water didn’t have far to go, the second floor was already filled halfway.

I was distracted from staring as a heavy chunk of rock splashed into the water, then another. I glanced up, then swallowed as the entire ceiling buckled.

Bastion shot away from the boss just as a piece of the ceiling longer than I was dislodged itself and crashed into the boss’s head with a dull, wet thump.

Dust filled the air, accompanied by the sound of heavy splashing as more and more stone fell down.

I spent a bit of Cleaning magic clearing the dust around me away.

Ding! Congratulations, you have end-ritched the life of ‘Cute-ulu, the Psyche Flayer,’ level 10! For defeating a Dungeon boss, bonus exp is gained! EXP reduced for fighting as a group!

I felt my shoulders slump. That was it. There were plenty of other notifications, but I shut those off for now. I had bigger concerns.

The water from the altars slowed, then stopped entirely, which I suppose helped a little. It certainly made things a lot quieter.

“Awen!” I called out.

“You know,” Amaryllis said. “I was in the fight too. I got all wet. It’ll take hours for my feathers to dry out.”

I laughed as I followed her voice. If Amaryllis was being snippy, then things were probably alright.

When I did find my friends, I crashed into them with a big, strong hug. It was rough, and I think we had some healing to do, but we’d made it.

***