The humanoid tar-monster's body was still slowly forming. Mia’s familiar, Ruby, lay coiled in front of them, ready to attack—though not having been sent forward by Mia for whatever reason. A bulbous form appeared moment by moment, the miniboss gathering its body together from the tar-like liquid in the cauldron.

“Melder,” Mia said. “Abyssal Melder. I think—do I know what that is?” She visibly wracked her brain, then growled. “Don’t think so. Haven’t heard of it, so we don’t even have an informational advantage. This is bad.”

“What should we do?”

“You? Depends. If there’s no add-ons, stay away. If there is, stay near me.”

“Like, smaller mobs?”

“Yes.”

Hazel nodded. If Mia and her familiar only had to contend with a single deadly opponent, the Abyssal Melder, then all Hazel would have to do was flee to the edge of the wine cellar arena and wait for the fight to resolve. But Mia’s tone made it clear she didn’t think that would be the case; there would be add-ons, smaller mobs to aid the miniboss, that presumably Hazel couldn’t fight on her own. Hence, she needed to stay close to Mia so Mia could protect her from them. Hazel could intuit she wouldn’t stand a chance defending herself. This encounter was on a different level than the previous.

There wasn’t time for further discussion. The tar-like beast made of black, gooey cauldron liquid finished pouring upward from its iron home, leaving a giant beast whose head nearly pressed into the ceiling. Bulbous, bulging muscles rippled across its body, with a torso far too large for its head. The monster was vaguely humanoid, but only vaguely. Even its face was monstrous, with an enormous jaw and mouth lined with sharp teeth.

It opened its mouth, and where Hazel expected a roar, instead a high-pitched shriek tore through the room.

The Abyssal Melder scooped into the cauldron, picked up a glob of whatever black essence it lived inside, then threw it at them.

Mia finally released Ruby on the beast, and the snake tore forward in a flash.

The frenzy of the fight began, and Hazel could only focus on what was relevant to her. The glob hurled forward, and Mia—and thankfully Hazel too—sidestepped the projectile. It splattered across the ground and started sizzling. Several more globs followed in quick succession, but were also easily dodged. Mia held her staff forward and starting pelting pink crystals into the enormous black-liquid beast. Ruby tore into liquid flesh, digging fangs in and thrashing, and fortunately, the Melder didn’t seem immune to physical attacks; it screamed and struggled against the snake, trying to dislodge Ruby’s bite.

Mia, distracted by fighting the miniboss, didn’t notice what was happening with the cauldron goo that had been thrown at them. Hazel did. Her eyes widened in horror before stuttering out a warning.

“The goo! Something’s happening!”

Mia glanced over just in time to see a recently created mini-monster. The black liquid had missed them, but it seemed the projectiles hadn’t fully been an offensive attack—not of that sort, at least. Instead, shin-high beasts were forming from the thrown liquid.

Hazel hadn’t had much opportunity to put her scythe to the test, and a fight of this magnitude was very much not the ideal time to still be figuring things out. Fortunately, Mia had reacted quickly to Hazel’s warning, and blasts of pink crystal crashed into the Melderling closest to Hazel—the first to have started forming, and which had already started charging her. Hazel swung her scythe at a different one, which was only half-animated, and she was relieved to find that her attacks did hold some substance: the gathering goo boiled as the blade passed through it, and when the liquid finished assembling into a Melderling, the monster spawned already critically injured.

Defending Hazel came at a cost. The Melderlings near Mia crashed into her leg, biting and scraping, and Mia cried out in pain as gouges were rent in her skin from sharp claws and teeth. She smacked the beasts away with her staff, then blasted them with more of her crystalline pink projectiles.

Hazel was vaguely aware of Mia being attacked, but could do nothing to help her; she was focused entirely on her own fight. Mia’s projectiles and even her staff helped clean up the Melderlings near Hazel much more than her own efforts, Hazel and her scythe only contributing small amounts—she was no peer to Mia, yet, however much her class was poised to be something monstrous in the future.

This simply wasn’t a level-appropriate fight for her. Hazel could help, but only barely. She activated [Attribute Siphon] with each swing of her scythe that contacted a Melderling, but the tiny attribute gains would hardly make up the difference in time.

Distracted by the add-ons, Hazel had stopped paying attention to the main encounter, the Abyssal Melder itself. That was a mistake, she quickly discovered. A giant glob of black essence impacted Hazel square in the back, and she stumbled a step forward. A Melderling lunged and dug teeth into her calf, taking advantage of the opening. The pain of the bite barely registered in light of the scalding sensation on her back. Her slime-flesh boiled and smoked as the Abyssal Melder’s projectile ate through her. Hazel was resistant against physical attacks to some degree, but this was either acidic or magical or something else, and it had to be even more potent than normal—or maybe it was just the level gap that made the attack so devastating.

In a panic, she tried to scrape off the black liquid clinging to her and sizzling, but she only got some on her hand. Mia, thankfully, cleaned up the Melderlings attacking her while Hazel was disoriented and stumbling around with acid eating at her, but the agonizing sensation of the liquid Mia couldn’t do much about. Thankfully, the pain subsided, the attack losing potency—but it had still come at a cost. Hazel checked her health indicator, eyes watering, to see that it had dipped more than twenty-five percent from that single attack. She really, really didn’t belong in a fight against level five miniboss. She was underequipped, underleveled, and undertrained.

Mia’s stalwart defense of Hazel was taking its toll for the better-prepared of them, too. Had Mia ended up in this unfortunate situation by herself, she could likely have survived this miniboss encounter with some minor injuries but nothing deadly. Having to defend a weaker, unprepared ally, she was holding up nearly as poorly as Hazel herself. She constantly needed to overextend herself and juggle her attention between three places: the miniboss, herself, and Hazel. It was an impossible to handle situation.

There were two saving graces keeping them alive. First, Ruby. While Mia and Hazel were finding themselves overwhelmed by the continuously thrown globs of black tar that were forming into Melderlings, the snake tore and thrashed into the liquid-flesh of the Abyssal Melder.

Secondly, Hazel was pretty sure the Melderlings counted as the main boss’s health. Comprised of the same cauldron liquid that it formed its own body from, each Melderling slain was expending the resource that renewed the miniboss’s physical form. In the quick glances Hazel could throw the creature’s way, she saw clear indicators of its deteriorating state. Great gashes and rends had been opened up across the vaguely humanoid beast, and black tar didn’t rush in to repair them, as had happened with the initial strikes.

But Hazel couldn’t tell who was faltering faster—them, or their opponent. Ironically, Hazel herself seemed to be in the best shape of everyone, with Mia dutifully protecting her, even at the expense of collecting her own injuries.

Which wasn’t to say Hazel was in good shape. As Melderling after Melderling fell—few of them to Hazel’s scythe, though she gave it her best effort—equally as many wounds tore across her body. Like the Abyssal Melder, Hazel’s body self-repaired, but the process was becoming slower as her health dipped lower and lower. She felt her vitality draining, that crucial resource being reduced with each attack buried into her legs, arms, or body. She didn’t have organs like a human, but the extents of her self-repairing had a limit—one that was quickly being reached.

But even with Hazel’s poor state, Mia and Ruby were worse off. Hazel’s defender had taken the bulk of the assault. In the few snapshot glances Hazel caught while feverishly fighting off Melderlings, she saw Mia bleeding from dozens of places, her outfit torn, her movements flagging. Hazel didn’t even have time to be worried about that. Her attention could only be on the Melderlngs, which were so much stronger, faster, and more durable than any of the easier monsters she’d fought so far.

“Watch out—!” Mia cried out.

Mia crashed into Hazel from the side, throwing her away. A fountain of black tar erupted across the succubus, coating her from nearly head to toe—an attack aimed for Hazel, which Hazel simply hadn’t been capable of paying attention to. Hazel watched in horror, knocked to the ground, as Mia screamed, stumbled, and desperately tried to scrape the acidic material off. Hazel staggered to her feet, trying to get to Mia, but a Melderling slammed into her, throwing her right back down. This close, her scythe was nearly useless—as it had been several times before—and she struggled in a desperate melee with the monster made from black tar.

Ruby arrived, the crimson snake slamming into the Melderlings attacking Mia. Smoke and sizzles rose from Hazel’s companion, and Hazel watched on, horrified, knowing first-hand how excruciating the acid attack was. The higher-level Mia was likely more resistant to it than her, but it still had to be agonizing. Especially because Hazel herself had only caught a glob earlier, not an entire fountain.

Hazel glanced at the miniboss, but despite Ruby having come to defend Mia, and thus no longer occupying by the deadly miniboss, the Abyssal Melder was laying slumped down in its cauldron, seeming exhausted and nearly dead. It had shrunk to only a portion of its size before; it had first towered with nearly its head touching the ceiling, but now it couldn’t be taller than five feet. Had the torrent of black tar been a final, desperate last attack?

They’d almost won. But they were also a fingernail’s distance from losing.

Mia climbed to her feet, finally recovering. The acid-like tar had stopped boiling. She swayed, unsteady on her feet, but rose her staff and started desperately firing pink crystal bolts at the Melder. Ruby thrashed and snapped at the Melderlings scrambling to her, and Mia all but ignored them as they bit at her legs. Mia had also surely noticed how close the Melder was to dying, and was desperately trying to end the fight, ignoring her own health in the process.

Hazel would help, but even with the Melderling’s numbers thinning, no longer being renewed by the miniboss, all she could do was desperately defend herself—and even then, only poorly.

Finally, with Mia’s magical assault too much to weather, the Melder let out a long, drawn out shriek, then exploded. The remaining Melderlings followed, popping into bursts of black tar. The material coated nearly every inch of the room, and it was just as acidicly potent as ever. Hazel cried out and desperately scraped it away, burning her hands in the process, but at least getting the bulk of the material off. To her side, she was vaguely aware of Mia doing the same. Hazel was just glad to see her moving. She looked to be in horrible shape.

When the chaos settled, the last good-bye explosion of tar no longer burning their skin, the two of them stood there, panting, barely staying upright.

Mia shared a look with her. She was almost unrecognizable after the messy encounter. Blood, tar, and burns covered her body.

Mia nodded once, satisfied she’d seen the two of them through the encounter, then promptly passed out.

velvetpetalrain

Sorry for the short break, got kind of busy!