As it turned out, Zanzital was correct that the Viper would make an excellent end boss, especially when combined with the teleportation ritual. Raz was correct that he was the next encounter anyway.

The room behind the next door didn’t look like the relatively small room that once held the teleporting array. Instead, it was huge and multileveled, with stone shelves that stuck out from the walls all over the place. One even hung on a set of silvery chains from the ceiling. Serenity hoped those chains weren’t metra; he didn’t want to deal with an area that required anchoring with that much metra.

Serenity couldn’t see the floors of the levels above the ground, but he could see the one in front of him, and it wasn’t encouraging. It was flat and should be easy to fight on, but there were a number of silver-colored circles that looked like they’d been merged with the stone floor. Since the ritual Raz disabled while Zanzital fought off the Viper was a teleportation or portal ritual and there were no clear routes to the other levels, it was fairly obvious what the circles had to be.

This was an arena and it was set up in a way that ought to be advantageous for a fast invisible illusionist who worked with poisons. Four people would have a hard time locking the Viper down in a room like this, even if they were all of his Tier. Serenity wasn’t sure if they would be or not; the other monsters so far were weaker than the originals, weak enough to easily be fought by skilled people at Tier Three or Four, but that meant very little when it came to the Viper. Perhaps the Hollow Ones had simply been returned to their original Tier; in that case, the Viper would still be Tier Nine.

Serenity could win this fight but he wasn’t certain he could protect Blaze and Raz. He was going to have to stay on the Viper and trust his allies to protect themselves. They’d known this was possible when they volunteered to enter the dungeon and yet they’d come anyway even though the dungeon didn’t list a Tier.

The Viper wasn’t visible, but Serenity was certain he was there somewhere. He’d have to hunt him down; it wasn’t going to be easy.

“The boss is at the back of the room, on that platform,” Raz stated confidently. “There are some other weaker monsters, too, one per platform and one in the middle there.”

Serenity looked towards the spot Raz pointed at; he didn’t see anything, but it was just beyond the range of Eyeless Sight. That brought home just how big the arena was; he hoped that Raz was correct. If they had someone who could detect the invisible monsters at a distance, it would be very useful.

They stepped the rest of the way into the room, then the door behind them vanished. That hadn’t happened in the other rooms. Serenity frowned and hoped that Zanzital wasn’t correct about this being the final boss battle. They still hadn’t found the papers that Serenity had hoped to find, and dungeons that had significant areas after the final boss were unusual.

“They’re moving,” Raz said. “They’re not all headed towards us; I think they’re staying on their islands. No, wait. The big one is on a different island now.”

“It just appeared there?” The answer to that question was vital. If the actual boss could jump between islands using the apparent teleporter circles, but the smaller ones couldn’t, they might be able to charge the boss but they’d have to be prepared to limit its movement as well.

“Yes,” Raz agreed. “And it just did it again. It went to the part of the island closest to the one it was headed towards to get there.”

“I hope that’s the key to the teleportation on this stage,” Serenity agreed. “If it’s more complex, it’s going to be really confusing.” It was already confusing enough. For example, there were three circles next to each other on the right of the field; they probably led to the three of the islands that came out from the right side of the wall, but which one went to which? Also, how did you get to the other two islands?

Serenity moved forward cautiously. It only took a few steps to get close enough that he ought to be able to see something with Eyeless Sight, but it always took that moment of concentration to separate his different types of vision unless he had Aide separate them.

….he was being an idiot again.

Aide, please highlight anything that shows up with Eyeless Sight that isn’t in my normal vision.

Happily. I thought … Aide trailed off, then resumed a moment later. It appears that I had set that up in the past, but at some point it was disabled without either of us noticing, probably to free up processing space. We have the space available now; I will also set up an easy way to reestablish it in the future if it is disabled.

At least it wasn’t just his own mistake. “I can see this one, and I should be able to see any that get close enough,” Serenity informed the others. “Raz, can you and Zanzital work together? He should be able to kill things if you can give the general location.”

“I can,” Zanzital confirmed. “I’d prefer that we all stay together. It’s probably best if you attack the boss, since you can see it; my area spells should be enough for anything else. In fact, I think I should handle everything else.”

That wasn’t the plan Serenity had intended; he’d thought they should clear out the islands first. They didn’t really have enough information to know which plan was better, and Zanzital’s would at least be faster. Serenity wasn’t opposed to letting Zanzital do most of the work if he wanted to volunteer, too.

“The boss is on this floor … no, now he’s on another island.” Raz sounded puzzled, but Serenity could see what happened.

Serenity hadn’t seen the boss; he must have been at the back of the room. He could now see two human-shaped solid images, though. If neither was the boss, the conclusion was obvious. “The boss is making more of the ones that can’t use the teleporters.”

In a video game, it might act as a soft enrage; if they couldn’t keep up with the summoning, they’d be overwhelmed. In reality, it probably explained why the arena didn’t have a mechanism to make them fight: it did, it just wasn’t obvious. The fight had already started, even though no one had yet clashed.

It also meant that the boss didn’t want to face them himself; instead, he wanted to use decoys and invisibility to take them out without any idea how. That seemed accurate to what Serenity remembered from the fight with the Viper; in fact, he’d used an illusory double that threw knives, didn’t he?

Knives that were coated with poison. “Blaze? Your job is healing anyone who gets hurt. Beware of poison or something else on the knives; in the real fight, the double’s knives weren’t poisoned but the real ones had something on them.”

“Got it,” Blaze stated. He sounded positively relaxed, like that was a normal assignment. To be fair, while they hadn’t really been fighting that much lately, Blaze was a mercenary and a delver. It probably was a normal assignment.

Zanzital led the way into the arena.

Serenity let the other man use his Death-based attack on the two monsters on the lowest level while he watched. They were shockingly adaptive; when they were hit with the area attack, they both ran instead of staying to fight. One ran towards Zanzital while the other ran the opposite direction; it looked very much like they were trying to make enough space so that they couldn’t both be hit at once, which was more intelligence than the actual duplicate Viper had shown.

They were also surprisingly sturdy; the one charging towards Zanzital might even survive to make it, so Serenity stepped forward to block off the Guildmaster. The duplicate veered away just far enough to not hit him, which made it obvious that it didn’t think it could be seen. Serenity lopped off its head as it went by; his manablade met no real resistance, but a visible body fell after his strike.

It looked a lot like the Viper.

“Sturdier than I expected,” Zanzital commented. “I didn’t expect it to make it that far with my spell up; I’m glad I had us stay together. Is the other one dead?”

“No, it’s over there. Near the far back.” Raz pointed at a spot that was annoyingly out of Serenity’s range for Eyeless Sight. In addition to being sturdier than expected, they were also faster. That might well be another factor in how they’d survived.

They had to get closer for Zanzital’s spell. Once they were, it didn’t survive a second spell, at least not when Zanzital got lucky and placed it almost exactly over the creature’s location.

The next step was trying one of the silvery teleportation circles. The good news was that they did indeed teleport to a nearby island and they didn’t change where they went. The bad news was that there was a nearly ten second delay between uses and they wouldn’t activate at all until the previous user stepped off.

When Serenity arrived on the first island, he found Zanzital standing just outside the teleportation circle with a maintained field of Death Affinity directly in front of him and several stab wounds. There was a body a few feet ahead of the mage, but Zanzital didn’t drop the spell until Serenity confirmed that he couldn’t see another enemy. They stayed there until everyone arrived and Blaze finished healing Zanzital.

That brought the first compliment of Blaze that Serenity could remember Zanzital uttering. It was a compliment compared to his normal comments, at least. “I guess you’re not completely useless as a healer; most can’t heal the undead.”

Blaze shook his head slightly when Zanzital said that. Serenity thought he smiled, but he wasn’t certain.

After that, Serenity was the first person through each teleporter. About half the time, he was attacked from close enough that it was easy to kill the monster; the rest of the time, Serenity simply defended until Zanzital arrived. Unlike the real Viper, these knives didn’t seem to be good enough to get through his scales and the false Vipers weren’t smart enough to realize that in time to attack anything else.

They chased the boss, who was almost certainly based on the real Viper, across a dozen different islands before they actually managed to catch up to him. They usually had to fight two minions, but there were three twice. When they finally did catch up, it was a surprise; they were headed towards him but not directly following and it seemed that the Viper had changed direction and headed directly at them; he arrived on the island from a different teleporter moments after they killed the two minions on the island.

Serenity was worried that he would turn around and teleport away, but either the teleporter cooldown was too long or the fight didn’t let him backtrack; the Viper took one look at them and ran for a different teleporter. Three steps in, a minion separated from the Viper and swung around, headed in an arc around them.

Raz called out the locations for both the Viper and the new minion and Zanzital dropped a Death Affinity spell on the area. Serenity simply charged through it, headed for the Viper.

Lillene

This fight was fun to design, but when I actually went to write it, it turned out awfully repetitive. I've tried to keep the highlights and toss the rest.