Knives & Levels - Chapter 120

When they attacked, they did so in a fully coordinated and deadly strike. The moment Nate said, "Go," they unleashed all they had, as if heaven's fury had descended upon the seed and condemned it for challenging the divine. Colt struck first, given the edge of his Movement Edict—and the sheer weight he threw into both of his knives as they struck the shell of the seed was enough for it to shatter through a building. His golden Edict sparked as it was suddenly met with a wall of resistance. The seed's Frost pushed back, as if the entire outside of this boss was made of a layered and nuanced Edict woven over the years.

His will pressed against it; if he were alone, it would not be enough, at least not on the first strike. He felt his knife edges digging in… But it repelled him.

But Colt wasn’t alone.

At the same exact time, Nate was there from the side, his hammer smashing into the thing and radiating outward, his blue twinkling fire spread out over the surface of the seed, burning away the cold and softening it, allowing Colt's knife to cut that much deeper.

Sarah was there next, one—two punches, each with a resounding thud as her fists worked the seed. Going for sheer speed at first to build up the strength of her hits. By the third, the seed gave a shake.

From overhead, a lance of ice sailed down and crashed into the side of the boss, scoring a deep cut in the shell, which was then capitalized on by the arm-sized supercharged light arrow smashing into the exposed surface and searing it well.

Against any normal foe, or even a human like Denny, this sheer condensed power thrown in rapid succession and all of the attacks hitting would be enough to utterly decimate whatever had stood in the pit. Within those handful of seconds, it should have wiped the creature or person out of existence before they even had time to think through what happened. 

Against the seed?

It just pissed the thing off.

A screech rocked out from the seed; with it came the sensation of an unknown horror behind your back, breathing on your neck with a chill that ran down your spine. It was like a dagger driven straight into their minds—Colt’s mental resistance kicked in a second later, letting him adjust as his will was temporarily broken. On the other hand, his friends didn’t fare so well, and the Seed lashed out at them for daring to attack it in its home.

Colt had just enough time to step back as a bundle of roots as thick as a person jerked out of the ground beneath the seed and slammed into his gut; Colt made it half way across the battleground, air slammed out of his lungs as his feet skidded over ice and through puddles of water that stole all of his heat. Even worse, where the root touched him, he felt an exhaustion. As if he should give up, and let it kill him. His body acted to betray him and give way to the cold, silent night that the Seed promised to deliver.

It was bringing him right to the side of the pit. Colt activated his Phantom’s Gambit and felt it pass through him… This felt different than normal; the root stirring up his insides and leaving his Soul feeling like it’d been brushed.

But still, it stopped dragging him. He heard a crack as it slammed against the ice, and another thump as one of his other companions wasn’t so lucky.

Colt shivered and stabilized himself, getting a sense of the battle in a second.

Sarah had been pinned to a wall. Again, part of the root was submerged in the ice, effectively trapping her there. Frost was gathering at the edge of her eyes; her hands shaking and trying to tear the growing collection of roots away as more appeared from behind her and leashed her further to it. Nate hadn’t moved much; bracing himself and fighting off several roots by flaring his whole body in that Astral Flame.

It had switched tactics with him, trying to slap him and grab at his ankles.

The seed, though, wasn’t undamaged as a result. Scorch marks from where Nick and Julia had hit it—deep grooves that leaked a viscous red sap that was thicker than blood from where Colt had cut it. And dents from where both Sarah and Nate had done their work. It had also decided after being damaged that it no longer wanted to linger on the floor of the pit where it could be hit—and was currently rising into the air, suspended by roots as thick as tree trunks that writhed, resembling tentacles from some giant eldritch beast rather than a weird celestial seed.

“You are not running from me,” Colt yelled, running after it, and taking a drag of his Movement. His steps sprang him forward, and with every one, he yanked more Momentum into the mix, further enhancing just how fast he could move. Then, once he was fast enough, he used Momentum again, changing the force of his direction upward at an angle, headed right at the rising form of the seed.

He held his Yeti knife out, coating the edge with the golden light of Cut as he slammed into the side of the Seed an instant later. With pure willpower and its weakened defense, the blade slid in and caught, making him a nice little knife hold to keep him in position.

From there, Colt began to slice at the shell—his power radiating out in a flare of gold as he used his knife to try to cut into the weak insides that had to be the interior of this Seed.

Once more came the mental screeches, battering against the barrier around his mind. Trying to disrupt him and get him to stop. This time, though, it wasn’t a surprise. His mental shields were up, and he hyper-focused, using Momentum to give his knife an unnatural force as he carved away the hard exterior of the Seed one slice at a time. More viscous red sap spilled from the growing hole in its side; thicker than blood, but with a reek just like it.

The glacier itself shook under the screeching, and then he saw eyes forming beneath the opened exterior of the shell. Many eyes, duplicating and staring at him, trying to draw him into a hypnosis. It didn’t work, but Colt had enough battle sense to predict what would follow from such a move.

Colt yanked his Yeti knife out and dropped right in time as a handful of sharpened roots tried to spear through where his back had been a moment earlier.

He hit the ground with a thud, and then another root snapped out and caught his leg, sending him tumbling. Another threw him into the air, and then a third tried to spear him through the chest as he flew—this one Colt phased through with a quick use of his Phantom’s Gambit, then jerked his flying body with a pull of Momentum to change the trajectory and ruin the follow-up attack.

When he hit the ground again, sweat formed and froze on his back, and his lungs worked in overdrive from the effort to stay alive and do damage.

His friends weren’t doing much better.

Sarah was covered in roots, and they were dragging her deeper into the wall. Merging her with the ice. She was screaming for help, but no one was there to support her. Nate was trying to work his way over, but the vast nature of the roots kept him far too occupied to accomplish anything at all. Every step he took just led to a new tangle of roots stopping him.

Up above, things weren’t much better. Roots trailed out from the side of the pit and curled inward to harass Julia and Nick. Though he didn’t have a great view of the fighting up there, it was enough to stop them from providing supportive fire. 

In a second, what had turned from a seed, seemingly waiting there like a sitting duck and transformed into an absolute war zone against nature itself. It had so many weapons that it was paralyzing to even figure out where to stop. It had an almost omnipresent ability to fight them all and keep them suppressed, even though it was just one boss.

Colt was overwhelmed.

With so many things going on at once from just a single foe, he didn't know how to focus. Should he save Sarah? Should he help Nate? Should he get to the top and free his mage and archer so they could fire upon their enemy? Even as each split second passed, the Seed was getting further away, floating far above, suspended by its army of roots—and oh.

That wasn’t good. A series of roots were tunneling above, as if it were trying to find a way to escape even while fending them all off.

Colt picked a direction on instinct and moved, slowing time itself down as his body rushed forward into action. Sarah.

With the increasing density of roots surrounding the girl and dragging her into the side of the ice, it was going to kill her. He didn’t kid himself with the belief that another focused attack from him on the seed would be quick enough to stop that dreadful reality. So when he acknowledged his lack of overwhelming might to do that, this was the easiest solution. In a flash, he was next to her, his knives sliding through the roots and slashing them to bits.

And then he noticed that with each cut root, the psychic shrieks of the Seed only increased.

Ah, does this hurt you, bastard? Good. Colt, though, as he slid his knife through another one of the dark, slimy tendrils, letting Sarah once more be able to inhale breath, above Julia gave a war cry, and he half turned his head in time to see her slam a javelin into the weak point he’d made in the seed.

The hit made the entire thing rock, as the spear laden with ice hung above, jerking the seed and making it sway as a vicious pour of celestial seed blood ran down its roots.

From the gasp of pain in his head, Colt knew that she’d hurt it quite a bit.

This, in turn, finally disturbed its focus, making it much easier to tear off the rest of the roots and phase through any that had tried to drag him into the wall. This put him in the exact same position that he was trying to break Sarah out of.

Nick had also managed to break out of his fight, showering the swaying seed with a sudden burst of light arrows above that weren’t that far off from a fireworks show.

Sarah broke free of the wall with one last cut, which must’ve been at least a series of a hundred to get through the last of the dense forest of roots.

"You saved me," Sarah said, flabbergasted. "Why aren't you killing that thing?"

"Because you were about to die, go over to Nate. Help defend. I'm going to go for an attack. If we make another opening, I’ll need you two there to help me do damage,” Colt explained, trying to catch a couple of lungfuls of breath before he pushed himself again.

Everything in him screamed to give up.

Even lifting his head to look at the Seed as it fended off the barrage of magic above made him want to collapse on the ground and drown in a puddle of cold water. It would be so easy to give in, to let it steal away his life and end the struggle.

He shrugged it off, though he saw that it wasn’t as easy for Sarah. The woman looked like she’d aged years as she shook next to him. Her eyes were hollow as she stared at the twitching form of the celestial seed not far away. “You should have let me die. I’m useless.”

“Quit it. It’s the seed sapping away your will. We do not have time to deal with this drama. Think back to how many times you sat at that mat, practicing your skills. How do you go and make yourself keep going, no matter how much your body tells you to quit? You ignored that voice then, and you’ll do it now. You’re not done until this thing is dead.”

“Colt…”

He didn’t have time to argue with her, and instead, having gotten just a flare of his soul back under control, flung himself back into the fight. He sprinted with a speed unnatural to the world, his feet cracking the ice beneath him as each push abused both of his Edicts to supply him with more power. Every step generated more force, which he knew would eventually transfer to the knives in his hands.

A veritable mountain of tendril-like roots closed in on him. They were like many fleshy appendages of an octopus, trying to catch his feet and slow him down, but they were both far too slow, and with Phantom's Gambit, navigating them was complex, and he was riding an edge of death the entire time. If it phased into existence at the wrong moment, one of those tendrils could grab him and ruin him in a second. They were a tangle of death, and their numbers only grew more by the second as the seed pulled an endless number of them from the glacier around.

Colt pushed through, running up the roots and cutting where he needed to. Luckily, his two friends up above put up quite a fight and divided the Seed’s attention.

Julia and Nick rained down light arrows and spears of ice, but it was a nuisance, not a full-blown attack that would stop the boss. From the way the roots kept spawning, this thing had quite a bit of fight left to it.

If it was this strong as simply a seed, Colt shuddered to consider what would grow from it if they’d waited those last few hours and let it hatch.

With gradual effort and no small accumulation of wounds on his part as he was forced to scale his way up to the boss, Colt ran up the side of the roots, and then with one last shift of Momentum tossed himself upward—his knife sliced into the side, cutting through it with a jerk and scraping noise as he cut through the icy steel—and then cut again, using one knife to hold himself in place.

Each scored the surface, cutting beneath to the many eyes that made up the interior of the seed.

But he didn’t get far. And already felt his strength draining.

Then his eyes went to the thing that had been causing him the most trouble. The roots. Even now, Nate and Sarah were being held at bay as the roots attacked them.

He switched his attention to them, sawing into the roots with each strike. And this, even more than attacking the Seed itself, made it scream—it took everything in him to shift down and focus his efforts here, letting his allies rain down attacks on the crack made in the shell.

Roots were the foundation of life. At the base of the seed, he began to cut through them, his infused blade transforming him into a deadly weed whacker.

More vines came loose as Colt lost himself in the cutting, splitting root after root. Suddenly, it lost the ability to remain upright, accompanied by a psychic roar as it tumbled down. It skidded against the side of the pit; Colt just kept slicing away, about halfway through the longer roots below. Each cord of vines was its own effort to cut, and he felt the strain in his soul as he continued to work.

They smashed into the ground with a crash, and then Nate was there. His hammer worked the half-cut shell, breaking through the outsides and revealing the innards. Sarah was next—her fist smashing into the fleshy bits and poisoning the blood beneath; he felt a new Edict from her as she worked. As if each hit were sapping away a little of the monster’s strength.

Colt concentrated on the roots. Cutting them as fast as they emerged, having flagged his winning strategy. If he took away its weapons, his allies could shatter its defenses and kill it.

It was a grueling affair, not the type of fight that Colt liked at all. He was forced to be a glorified hedge trimmer while the others tore in through the boss's exterior and finished it off.

He'd much rather be the one going in for a one or two-hit kill. But after his first cut in the roots above, his path to victory became clear. Not an elegant or pleasant path, but it was his.

Sarah's repeated use of crescendo made each hit begin to shake the entire thing and do real damage. Nate was able to bust open with his astral flame, further doing damage and making them dismantle it, hit by hit. Sometimes, maybe the most effective method of winning a fight wasn't to rely only on yourself and your overwhelming might but to play to the strengths of your allies, using them to form the most effective solution to keep everyone alive and still win.

In a good ten minutes, they turned what had been a monstrosity, inevitably going to kill them, and ended it with the corpse of a Seed.

———

You have defeated Celestial Seed -  Level 105

You have leveled up!

You have leveled up!

You have leveled up!

You have 9 Stat points to spend. You have gained 3 points of Dexterity and 3 points of Soul.

Soul And Mind Fortitude (Advanced) has gained a level!

Olympic Physique (Intermediate) has gained a level!

Thread Weaver (Intermediate) has gained a level!

Knives/Daggers Proficiency (Advanced) has gained a level!

Phantom’s Gambit (Intermediate)  has gained a level!

Dungeon Alert: The Celestial Seed Has Been Defeated

Congratulations!

All mandatory bosses have been slain. The exit has been opened. You have completed Primeval Park!

Rewards distributed to the associated Faction!

———

Colt took a deep breath, the relief in his chest palpable as he stared down at the limp roots that had regrown from where he'd cut. His hands felt colder than ever, the fingers shaking now that he wasn't in the middle of the fight.

The red light that had dominated the room began to fade away, plunging this place into a dull light blue that seemed to glow from the ocean floor itself. Then, in the middle of the room, a portal appeared, their exit. Only, the entire thing started to shake, and more water began to spill in. The bottom half of the portal was filling rapidly with ice-cold water, as if the ocean was crashing into the bottom of this glacier and breaking in rapidly. Colt's eyes widened as he realized they weren't safe, although the fight ended.

“We have to leave!” he called to his friends near the top. Nate grabbed the corpse of the seed and started to drag it to the exit, along with Sarah. Colt watched above, making sure they could make it down in time.

The shaking intensified, cracks forming all around them as the sudden pressure of water began to ram into the ice. Julia jumped down, using a stream of water to soften her blow, as Nick followed behind. Nick caught them both and, in a quick motion, flooded them into the portal.

Colt followed, the last one out, and safe from the dungeon itself.