'Uriel the Legend? That feels wrong,' Alec thought to himself. Dodging the boss' blatantly patterned attacks had become laughably easy now. And as far as he understood, that was not how a boss fight was supposed to go. Not at all. 'Will there be a second phase?'

Nevertheless, Alec continued the same strategy. His legs shuffled as he spammed the monster with magic missiles. This time though, he made sure to hit every single missile, lest he waste precious mana. It took him five minutes to chip down the boss without wasting much stamina or mana.

As soon as the statue went down, he stepped back and lowered his body, ready to respond to any sudden movement.

The first signs of the second stage didn’t come from the boss’ body but from Alec's interface. The now-emptied health bar started filling up once again, and the name hanging above it started blurring.

Once the boss on the ground started twitching and rising to its feet, the name finally disappeared. The bar filled up, and the body floated up into the air slowly. The balls of fire, still that white, solid constructs on the scale caught on fire. One was a blazing red. The other was… Blazing too. This time blue.

Then, the boss’ body started changing. It suddenly split apart into two, right in the middle. Again, blue and red.

“Tsk,” Alec clicked his tongue. He wanted to start attacking pre-emptively, but the boss was in an animation right now. Nothing he did collided, passing right through. That changed only when the boss completed its transformation, two halves of a body standing side by side. The insides were solid, without any organs, which was a relief. Alec didn’t want to see that at all.

The scale was also split into two. While the red part of the boss had taken the blue flame, the other had taken the red flame. Seeing this, Alec wrote down before storing back The Author’s Pen. There was a good chance he wouldn’t be able to leisurely write while fighting.

The waning lights of his enhancement spells renewed while a quarterstaff appeared from the ground, this time an alloy of tungsten carbide. He had finally spent the time researching the known materials of this world, and tungsten carbide was amongst these. That meant low cost, incredibly high durability, and a shit ton of weight he could swing without being unwieldy, nearly 60 kilograms.

It was a sizeable weight, but not to the degree Alec couldn’t swing around. However, he did have to be careful with the way he swung it, or the momentum would destabilize his body. And had the quarterstaff been 90 kilograms or so, he wouldn’t be able to swing it at all. Not because he wasn’t strong enough, but because it would simply be heavier than his body. He assumed one of strength stat’s milestone effects would solve that, but which exactly? That was a question he didn’t have an answer to.

Grabbing the quarterstaff, Alec pointed it towards the two parts of the boss. While the blue boss took a step back to raise his part of the scale, creating tens of fireballs, the other half dashed forward, brandishing its scale like the first phase of the boss, albeit faster.

[Uriel of the Flame]

The boss' new name hung in his vision with all its glory. Alec swung his quarterstaff in answer to the red boss coming crushing down on Alec. The blue flames from its scale spread out, blanketing him. His swing kicked up the air, pushing away the flame and connecting with the illusion's head. Surprisingly, Alec felt the weight of his swing slam against its temple, causing the thing to do a full spin in place and fall down.

'How did they manage to do this? I don't feel any mind magic at play, is the statue actually moving?' Alec thought while dodging a half-solidified plasma ray of fire. His hit was solid. The quarterstaff carried quite the punch, and with the way Alec handled it, it could easily crack open a wall.

The boss' health bar had split into two, each half having the same name but different colors. The one Alec had just hit was the red one, its name in Alec's interface mirroring its color. That hit had taken away a good 40%.

'Two more like that and it's done,' Alec thought. However, the boss wasn't a mindless automaton. Once it got back up with the help of its red half, it was much more careful. It stood next to its mage counterpart and protected it while the other kept blasting Alec with fireballs and a plethora of other fire-based spells.

This was, unfortunately for them, the wrong strategy. Alec had been waiting for the space created by the lack of pursuit. He quickly bent down and wrote down a spell.

[Cold Rain]

Unlike what one might expect, this spell didn't have anything to do with water. Using water-based spells could be hard, as only a small part of the planet's atmosphere was water vapor. This necessitated the existence of a nearby source of water, which Alec didn't have access to.

And in the end, he didn't need it.

The air in the temple seemed to stand still for a moment. Atoms, previously filled with energy, calmed down and started coalescing. First, spread a wave of heat from Alec's spell, and then a gaseous substance appeared around him. It rose and suddenly started raining down on the bosses.

That was liquid nitrogen. Alec had used the nearby air as a heatsink and isolated some amount of cooled-down nitrogen. A cool spell. Quite literally.

Once the rain of liquid nitrogen started, Alec distanced himself quickly. He didn't want that coming in contact with his skin, or he would be dealing with frostbite for quite a while.

The bosses weren't as smart. They kept spamming Alec with fireballs, unaware of the spell he had cast.

Once the drops of liquid nitrogen started hitting their body, especially the flaming hot scale in their hands, it started shaving away portions of their health bars. Not to mention, the flames they were so proudly blasting away were suppressed. A lack of oxygen strangled their strength, cutting off whatever their source of energy was.

This spell Alec had cast was a third circle one with particularly high mana costs. Another group with average students might not be able to cast it at all, let alone do it as well as The Author's Pen did.

Once the rain of nitrogen ended, the bosses were left with less than fifteen percent of their health bars. Alec didn't waste any time and followed up with a flurry of strikes with his quarterstaff, which finished them off. Once the bars emptied fully, the illusions around him ended. He found himself in the temple, wrought and battered by the cold and Alec's strikes. However, none of the bosses' attacks were left behind. Not even a little charring or burnt surface. The statue in the middle was now broken. However, the remains were spread following the illusion.

'So the statue was actually moving. The illusion was used for the hit recognition and visual effects,' Alec thought. He didn't know whether to be revolted by the idea of the moving statue, or to be impressed by the magical feat. Then still, he had seen much worse...

Before he could think further on the topic, however, he was blasted with a notification. It wasn't a simple notification like before. Instead, a scroll of some sort unraveled in front of his eyes.

[Alec Greenwood has taken down a high-level boss! 5.000 points have been awarded!] It read.

When Alec looked at his points indicator, however, he saw there to be 20.000 points instead. The 4x multiplier for the solo players was still there.

'Why was that notification so... General? Was it-'

[Team Spellson has taken down a high-level boss! 5.000 points have been awarded!]

Another notification came. This time much smaller, more like a simple kill-feed on the upper-right of his vision.

'Okay it's a map-wide notification,' he confirmed his own thoughts. Fortunately, the rewards of lesser importance didn't seem to have notifications of their own. Or else, he would have his entire vision covered by people killing low-level bosses, he presumed. Considering the strength of the boss he had just fought, it should have been quite easy for the other students to at least take out the lower-difficulty ones.

'Hm... I feel a bit bad for the first graders. But what can I do? I'm not the one who prepares the exam, after all,' Alec thought before leaving the temple at full speed. If he wanted to get that first place, he would have to be quick on his feet. If he guessed right, Edward would be doing some pretty unorthodox things to bolster their points.

After running inside the forest for a short while, Alec passed through a perfectly angular tunnel like before and reached another cave. As soon as he stepped out, he found himself standing on top of a magic circle, one that covered the entirety of that particular cave. If he had to eyeball it, he would guess it to be around thirty meters in diameter.

Further ahead, around the circle, there were approximately twenty-five people, all split into their own parties and spread across the edge of the cave. While some were indifferent, some were looking at Alec with terrified expressions.

[You have entered a 10-team damage calculator challenge area! Do you want to allocate 2.000 points to join the challenge?]