Chapter 281 - Boss Fight!

For an endless moment, Eric felt like he was being stretched impossibly thin between worlds, a heartbeat from blipping out of existence entirely, just a flickering spark lost in the vastness of cold, uncaring space.

Then he snapped back into existence with a lurch and a gasp, grateful just to be alive before feeling the crushing weight of gravity more than five-fold Earth’s norm. Gravity and the rotten egg stench that was so acute with his exquisite perception, other scents and sounds revealed an eyeblink later as his familiar’s screams rang through the air, and Eric realized to his dismay that he hadn’t been teleported back where he had started, but right into the final massive chamber of this orange tier death trap of a dungeon. And of course all his chants had been dispelled with the jump between worlds, even if his mind was now as refreshed as if he had slept for a week, all his insights fully processed and absorbed, his potency pools at full, leaving Eric exquisitely able to appreciate just how utterly screwed he was, finding himself in a massive cathedral-like chamber of obsidian stone absolutely covered in writhing tentacles dripping with caustic fluids, pulsating eyeballs, and mouths locked in silent screams.

Save for the mouths eagerly chomping at his boots, right before Eric spotted multiple massive Lovecraftian tentacles twisting through the air, heading right for his open mouth.

Because it all finally clicked. He recalled where he had seen this nightmare before.

Iado skillcheck made!

Fortunately, Eric’s muscle memory overrode even his stunned horror as he cleaved the closest tentacle by technique alone before snapping back into the moment, embracing lessons blazing so fiercely in his mind, his sword truly becoming an extension of himself, as his blade spun and danced through the air, slicing through multiple appendages that came so close to ramming themselves down his throat.

Yet that did nothing for the ones darting for his ankles anymore than it had for the hero of a movie that had emblazoned itself upon the collective psyche of earth a handful of years before as he was instantly yanked off his feet, head clanging like a gong in on the ground, so quickly had he been flipped, mad Vitality alone allowing him to keep his wits as he spotted the author of the mad cackle echoing endlessly through this cathedral of horrors, pulsating vine-like tendrils, and far, far too many eyes.

Pulsating tendrils of green and purple flesh somehow transforming from vines and octopedian limbs to pulsating veins bringing darkest ichor and sickly sweet mana to the gaunt, hairless man dressed in a wire-rim glasses and white lab coat of all things. Yet what truly scent Eric’s heart racing with dread as he gazed down on the sterile metallic clean room in the center of this nightmarish temple.

Because even that was a perfect match.

“Eric! Please don’t let him hurt me!”

His bunny’s plaintive wail as the mad-scientist of a monster examined Eric’s familiar with chilling intensity.

“The Garden of Paradise Creation Kit has worked beyond all expectations! Not only has it brought life to this hell hole, it saturates even the recently perished with fresh life, should no predator eat them within minutes. And you, my little darling revenant, with full cognizance and a functioning metabolism, are a perfect example of both!” declared the abomination speaking perfect Kunskapsspråk as the looming creature miming humanity twisted its skull around to gaze up at Eric, before flashing a wide smile that seemed to stretch and stretch, lips bubbling and boiling as a perfect set of teeth became serrated and black.

“She will make a wonderful addition for my next set of experiments. As will you, Eric Silver, with the sweet silver heart of a Contender beating in your breast. One can only wonder to what glorious heights I will be able to expand my people’s pocket realm to then, no?”

Eric blanched, gazing down at the creature who’s hands were busy with rabbit, scalpel, and a pulsating three inch wide seed of pulsating veins and wildly blinking eyes in stunned disbelief. “Wait, you’re self-aware? You know you’re effectively a dungeon boss, and that this is your realm?”

“This is our cage you mean!” Labcoat barked, lips snapping back into an impatient professor’s scowl. “Our ship’s engines were damaged just bracing for a landing after pirates trapped us in the gravity well that is this hell-hole! We were promised a virgin paradise and instead we’re sentence to permanent exile here, of all places by bitter folly and chance alone! For years I struggled to bring life to purgatory while my fellow colonists remained in cryostasis. Years that have finally come to end as we turn this nightmare realm into the paradise it was always meant to be!”

Eric winced. Because few things were more terrifying than the odd combination of lucidity and madness that he sensed from the creature below.

He allowed his hands to dangle helplessly, the mutated creature below sparing only a single contemptuous glance for the mithril blade Eric dropped when he had been torn off his feet. “What if I were to tell you that your people weren’t doomed? That there’s a way for you all to escape this hell world and embrace a land rich in life and hope, full of lush green forests, verdant fields, and a warm golden sun shining overhead even now!” Eric locked gazes with the creature, imagining that he saw a flicker of humanity in it’s eyes, for just a second. And somehow he knew… that some vestigial part of the mutated creature before him that still thought of itself as a member of Ingrid’s clan, that still had a flicker of a Psionicist’s gifts, could see the beautiful images of Earth that Eric allowed to flicker across his mind.

“Maybe it isn’t even too late for you to leave… so long as you have the right person helping to free you.”

This earned a contemptuous snort as the monster crossed his arms, for the moment setting down the scalpel he had been just a second away from using to carve Eric’s familiar open. No matter that the massive ropy limbs holding a helpless-looking Eric by his feet dragged him over to meet the scientist’s contemptuous glare.

“You think you can actually help me? You who have butchered so many of my creations? Claiming their corpses before fresh life can twitch within their frames once more?”

The creature gave a slow shake of his head, Eric chilled to see its human looking flesh bending more like twisted vines than soft pliant human flesh as it moved it’s neck back and forth.

“I’m afraid there is only one path forward. And that is to prepare all of my lost people for the pristine gift of evolution! Soon all of them will savor the gifts I have granted the first set of clones I revived… clones which you cut down to the last man, woman, and child!”

Eric’s eyed widened with horror as the implications of the creature’s words slithered within his mind.

According to the puppetmaster of this entire pocket realm… Eric hadn’t been slaughtering homicidal monsters… but the original members of the settler crew. The first and fully transformed batch of sentients that had been warped into the horrors Eric had taken such fierce joy in cutting down, one and all.

Eyes glittering with madness smiled into Eric’s own as the massive vine that had clamped upon his legs lowered him to within an arm’s reach of the monstrous face now glaring at Eric.

“And do you know what the best part is?”

Eric slowly shook his head, heart pounding as his foe’s massive constricting vines slowly began coiling tightly around him, securing feet, legs, and hips.

Somehow Eric didn’t think he’d last too long if it managed to get to his throat.

“The best part is that I don’t even have to implant this glorious seed within you!” The madman squealed, holding up the pulsating knot of eyes, veins, and gyrating pulsations. “I need merely place it against your girlfriend’s—” The creatures began to blur and shake, cutting itself off. “—familiar’s skin, and I will naturally…

The creature blinked in sudden confusion, gazing down at the spurting stump where his hand should have been. He blanched like a man betrayed, eyes widening with fury.

Because Eric, with his instantly summoned Soul-Bound blade, wasn’t being true to the expected victim script that was all this creature could have expected in its earlier remembered encounters with trapped colonists that might or might not have actually happened. Either way way, Eric served as its first encounter with something truly unexpected within its little pocket realm.

Especially when Eric made full use of his latest perk, embracing an Elite tier evolution as a fiery crimson blade of swirling plasma flashed twice more through the air, Eric crashing to the ground far harder than he’d like, even at just 6 feet off the now cracked stone tiles.

Just a heartbeat before their foe itself did…. Sans the head Eric had just cleaved free of its neck.

Regrettably, the spurting fountain of blood that would have presaged the end of this boss encounter failed to manifest, reciprocity of the unknown in full effect when Eric too was forced to compensate for an encounter utterly outside his paradigm.

“Eric! Look out!”

“Fucking hell,” Eric hissed, lurching to his feet before weaving and sprinting past the labcoat now billowing with a massive explosion of whipping tendrils.

“Goddamn dungeon’s pulling out all the stops with the first clear!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Shrieked the bunny now trembling on his shoulder when a strength check tore her free of all restraints with surprising ease before he plopped her right back on his shoulder before weaving and dodging for all he was worth, cartwheeling and flipping past vines streaking through the air with the speed of cracking whips and bullets.

“Never mind! Just point those beautiful ears of yours and fire!”

“Inevitable Doom!”

“Hell Vines!”

Eric shouted the vocal components to two of his favorite spells as he gazed at the massive slime-covered tendril covered in snapping mouths and blinking eyes angrily glaring his way... flapping upon the massive obsidian floor bubbling with caustic acid Eric only registered in passing as he DOVE for all he was worth as three more massive tendrils shattered the ground where one had failed to bind.

Even as he did so, the puppet-like remains of the man he had foolishly thought the boss monster had erupted into a soaring abomination of tendrils, trunk, and wild-eyed hate, a cacophony of twisted flesh, arboreal bark, and pulsating hearts focused no less than a hundred bulging eyes from the pulsating mass hidden beneath a storm of thick viny limbs whipping through the air.

Eric kept a wary eye out for the massive arboreal limbs that could so easily pound Eric to a pulp, for all that twenty yards now separated Eric from his foe taking up the center of this monstrous vine-covered layer, so massive was the vaulted roof of the domed chamber at the top of this obsidian edifice serving as the crown jewel of this hellish realm.

“Hell Vines!” Eric screamed for the twelve consecutive time for pressure and cover as he continued to race around the periphery of the room as monstrous limbs darted furiously past Eric’s fiery sentinels, eager to wrap up and rend Eric’s flesh, no matter that Eric’s fiery vines were covered in thorns sharper than any stiletto, wrapping tightly around so many of the Boss tier tendrils whipping through the air.

But his vines only managed to trap a small fraction of his enemies limbs, Eric was all to well aware of that painful truth when he was smashed right off his feet, crashing against the far cathedral wall with such force he left a crater, and was half-afraid he was about to be sent tumbling right through the building.

You have been struck by a Stunning Blow!

Catastrophic Injuries have been reduced by armor and Damage Resistance to 2 Medium Wounds and 1 cracked rib! Skill check penalties mitigated by imminent death and adrenaline surge!

Vitality check made!

Eric groaned, his head throbbing with pain.

“Eric, you have to get up! Sanguis Fulmen! Those saw-toothed vines are cutting through your trees! Eric! Look! That massive thing is growing! What the hell can we do!?”

Eric hissed, forcing his eyes open when Bunbun’s queries became panicked shrieks and he darted back under cover of his fiery shrubbery that was slowly being torn up by the massive pulsating knot of sentient malicious shrubbery glaring Eric’s way with too many hate-filled eyes, sacrificing one tendril after another, no matter how many burst into white-hot flame.

And that’s when Eric realized it, wide-eyes spotting what should have been obvious with his time helping out in the garden, however many years ago it had been.

“Bun! What does that fucker not have?”

“Eric, I don’t know shit about pod horrors or plants! If it’s not in Exile’s Path, I never learned it!”

Eric’s chuckle was becoming a wheeze, as ten minutes of furious sprinting was enough to drain even him at a full ton and a half of effective weight. “The fucker’s all thorn and no anchor. It has no root system! The limbs wrapped on the walls can barely support their own weight at 5G! Alright, time for an emergency ritual cast! Bunbun, I need you to pour your lightning on any tendril that gets too close!”

Heart pounding with desperation, Eric began weaving between the dozen tree like bulwarks he had summoned in the last few mad minutes, and what should have been a lethal trump card having done nothing but buy him time as he chanted the words to a ritual he could only hope would see them through.

“Inverto! Gravitas! Plures! Attentio!”

Eric groaned, stumbling to the ground as a massive surge of Mana and Qi poured into the environment, Eric’s heart swelling with sudden alarm as he caught sight of just how close he was from where he needed to be. And it was still too far away.

“Eric!” His familiar screamed, her ice wand cartwheeling up towards the roof of the massive cathedral even now emitting sharp reports as stone began to buckle and rupture, countless tons of masonry suddenly exploding straight upward as Eric desperately clawed at his own quickly uprooting vines and sprung right for the grand alcove with a pale white marble front where the entrance to the chamber should be.

Eric bit back a snarl as the air vibrated with a horrific screech and he caught sight of countless furious eyes glaring his way as the twisted abomination of octopedian limbs, snapping mouths, and wild-eyed hate glared his way… even as it began stretching toward the ruptured ceiling; bricks, mortar and an increasing number of vines all reaching for the heavens.

But it wasn’t enough.

As was made all too clear when not one but a full two dozen fleshy limbs began furiously pounding at the pair of hell vine bushes that were all that stood between Eric’s Alcove and the abomination so desperate to kill him.

Eric snarled and spat blood, his steady trickle of maintenance mana becoming a flood as he pushed the bounds of what even he could do with his chant, screaming out the words a second time, now daring no limits to the boundaries of his spell.

The eldritch abomination’s shriek became a keening wail raising in pitch and location...

Then Eric felt his stomach lurch when up suddenly became down, the swirling skies now an endless chasm a eager to claim him as the boss monster that had nearly spelled his doom.

“Eric!”

Finesse Check made!

It was all he could do to tightly grip what was now a too smooth alcove indentation that had suddenly become the sharp stone face of a massive yawning pit under his feet with dark brooding clouds of thunderous hellfire twisting into what looked like an outright tornado far, far below.

Eric flashed a fierce smile, sensing the massive sentinel crashing right through the clouds.

Before his heart skittered, icy dread filling his veins when the stonework under his hands gave off the sharp report of shattered stone, and he too began to plummet down into to the endless depths below.

“Abort!” Eric screamed, before crashing back down upon what was now a jagged floor, eyes widening with horror at the sight of the alcove now sans roof that was about to fall right on top of him.

“Fuck!”

He barely dodged out of the way in time.

It was a dodge that suddenly became a desperate hustle as the ground exploded with pieces of shattered masonry crashing back down to the ground at terrifying speeds as Eric caught a momentary 360 glimpse of the tiny pocket realm seeming to stretch forever in a horizon crackling with sulfuric yellow clouds and lightning in those moments between the massive tower dome being torn right off the building before it completed its ascent before 5G gravity claimed it once more, accruing a velocity that was absolutely chilling, Eric knowing it would crash in precisely the amount of time it had taken to reach the heavens… which meant he had only seconds before he was transformed into crimson paste.

Eric laughed for sheer madness, already knowing what he had to do as he weaved and zigzagged past chunks of masonry that would have pulverized him had his speed not been over thirty-fold human norms as he darted for the far end of what was now effectively a shattered rooftop, screaming the final word to his chant as he dove right off, his furiously cursing bunny faithfully by his side.

“Debilito gravitas unus attentio!”

It was a fall that would have proven fatal, had Eric not throttled gravity back to be just a fraction of a single g-force, which gave him a shockingly visceral view of the shrieking ball of whipping limbs and bulbous eyes pinning Eric with its glare, a thousand mouths opening for one final world-ending curse… before it struck its former layer with such force that it exploded right through the top of the obsidian tower, crashing through countless floors to the obsidian plains below as the entire structure began to crack and crumble before collapsing at insane speeds, the entire realm shuddering with the force of the collapse, so sharp was the pull of gravity within this pocket realm.

You have been Critically Struck by Psionic Blast!

You have no Psionic Shields!

Mental Resistance has been overwhelmed!

You have failed to save versus Stunning Blow!

At which point Eric’s mad laughter cut off with a groan when his bunny gave a panic yelp.

“Eric, we’re picking up too much speed!”

But there was little Eric could do. Because it turned out the abomination aping humanoid sentience still had enough of it’s victims original gifts that it had done that which none of the settlers he had struggled so hard to save had dared to do.

His foe unleashing a final retributive strike as it perished, a mental attack that had nothing to do with physical manifestations of power but rather a direct attack on the mind itself, striking Eric in ways he suspected his Sylvan heritage was piss-poor at countering.

And at the worst possible time, right before he could safely complete his descent.

“Eric!”

Despite being dizzy and disoriented as he plummeted to the ground, he had just enough sense to minimize his weight by immediately placing everything he was wearing in his ES Storage space as his slow-fall spell cut off just a handful of seconds too soon.

Before he could even think of a counter, the ground rushed to meet him at just the wrong place and angle as Eric felt the final lingering curse-marks of a defeated abomination fade. But not before Eric slammed right into a massive slab of fractured obsidian so sharp it cut both his legs clean off at the knee.

You have lost left leg to Retributive Strike! (Tool: obsidian ruins)

You have lost right leg to Retributive Strike! (Tool: obsidian ruins)

You have successfully saved versus critical blood loss!

Eric gazed at his own spurting leg stumps in bemused disbelief. His inhuman Strength and Vitality had saved the rest of his body from anything more than strained muscles and lacerated skin, a near thirty foot drop at 5G. But both his legs had been completely sheered off at the knees by a piece of broken obsidian masonry.

- Hold it together, fool! You’re dying! -

The words echoed tinnily through his mind. How ironic it was that Eric was to die here, after defeating the final boss of the dungeon he was a heartbeat away from claiming as his own.

Before recalling so viscerally the wide-eyed look of disbelief as friends gazed down at perforated organs after a failed assassination attempt in Freetown… and the blood magics Eric had used to seal the wounds and save their lives.

The same magics Eric’s dying mind screamed at him to use to seal the blood spurting from his severed limbs at that very moment. Embracing magics he had mastered in the heat of combat to a degree that defied belief.

“Eric!” Bunbun’s voice sounded so distant, and so truly panicked even Eric was ripped free of his daze.

“Clot!” Eric whispered in a reedy voice as exhaustion strove to drown him in the darkness of oblivion.

A darkness he inevitably surrendered to.

But not before being genuinely amazed at how easy it now was for him to stop the flow of blood from the stumps of his legs with a single surge of his will.

But the blood that had already been spilled refused to heed his call… already turned black and rotting with his enemies’ final curse.

An enemy that was now no more.

It was a truth that gave him scant comfort as he spent the next half hour choking back sobs as his legs blazed with a pain so horrifically like that which he had suffered in the orcish fire pit, writhing and sobbing and crying like a babe as his limbs regrew before his tearing eyes at a rate that was both awe inspiring and terrible, Eric forced to feel the equivalent of months worth of neuronal excitation in just a handful of minutes as both mana and legs recovered, Unified Restoration finally hitting Rank 9, and Eric couldn’t help but sob with relief, cuddling his patient bunny and groaning with pain.

“Eric! Pull yourself together and slap on your magic toys. We did it! We actually cleared this fucker! Now lets finish that quest, leave this hellhole, and claim this territory once and for all!” Bunbun said with an excited thump of her back paw, nuzzling a still shaking Eric as he quickly resummoned all his favorite soul-bound equipment, carefully slipped on his mithril hauberk and helm, and then his essence infused scale armor over that, taking a few deep breaths to collect himself before turning back to his bemused looking familiar and forcing a smile on features still streaked by tears and pain.

“You’re damn right we did it, Lilly! Cleared out this whole fucking dungeon faster and with far less pain than any of your V-16 builds. The payout’s better as well.”

His bunny blinked. “But Eric, we didn’t get shit! The entire tower and that tentacle boss asshole are now a crater of rubble some fifty feet...” she glared at a now smirking Eric for long seconds.

“You’re such an asshole,” she huffed. “My V-16 builds are ‘leet, and you know it! Also I build them with solo players in mind. They’re for people who aren’t using mommy’s credit cards to buy in-game gold and trade-league their way to Purple Tier elite item builds!”

Eric smirked and nodded. “Exactly.”

His rabbit glowered, waving her wand and twitching her ears. “Don’t make me zap you.”

Eric laughed. “Come here, silly.” He gave her a hug. “Thanks, Lilly. I think you saved my bacon more than once.”

Bunbun huffed, then rubbed her ears against his cheek. “Damn right I did. Now let’s get the anti-grav unit and get whatever ‘leet rewards this stupid System gives people who actually manage to pull orange tier clears!”

Eric nodded, halfway expecting said gravitational unit to manifest in his hand, before getting a message that not only hadn’t he been expecting but he found outright infuriating.

***Graviton Dreams Quest Failure!***

Graviton Unit X703 Has been crushed by 3537 tons of obsidian stone & 1 obliterated Dungeon Boss!

You have failed to rescue stranded colonists from crushing gravity! Their lives will be short indeed, once you leave this delve!