Ank

“Here we are”, I said, holding Hunah’s hand. “The last boss room.”

We’ve been for an unknown amount of time inside that [Dungeon], but it definitely wasn’t a short one; we explored hundreds of underground tunnels and rooms, walked through kilometers of snowy forest and caves painted to the ceilings with rudimentary hunting images, and climbed the tallest tree we’ve seen in our entire lives, and even dived inside the secrecy of its trunk. We killed literally hundreds of monsters, and even discovered innumerable secrets (99% of the time they were more cards that allowed entrance to the [Dungeon], though). And it was finally time to leave.

Well, to be fair, at that point, if we walked back to a boss room and asked Incute to take us out of there, she would probably oblige, but the [Dungeon] revealed to be more rewarding than I originally thought; with a boss to learn how to summon, and good loot for Hunah… Though, if we came across another labyrinth, or some other tiresome task, I could reconsider.

“We have just one more challenge”, my sister said, tightening her grip on my hand.

We looked back, and to the small little world: from there, we could see half of the single-biome planet at once, and we absorbed the beauty of the scenery one last time; frozen lakes and waterfalls, rock caves, snow-covered clearings, and identical conical trees spotting the landscape. For some reason, I was feeling a weird connection with that place, and I was sure Hunah felt the same, and who knew when we would see any of that again, if ever?

Finally, we took a deep breath, separated our hands, and pushed the door made of intertwined leaves and branches aside.

The arena was at the very top of the tree, above the snow clouds, and so close to the artificial sun and blue skies, it was warm. Just like the door that opened to the battlefield, the ground was a compressed amalgamation of woody branches and green leaves, but forming a giant circle over the tree canopy; outside, free-fall and certain death.

At the very middle of the arena, laid the 3rd floor boos. And it exhaled overwhelming strength effortlessly; eight meters tall twelve meters long, the furry monster was a mountain of muscles over muscles with claws and teeth bigger than my head:

[Species: (D - boss) Megatherium, Level: 60

HP: 5000/5000 (5000)]

My face wasn’t the most expressive, always making me look as if I was a little tired, but as the last boss lifted itself from the ground, towering over us and shaking the ground beneath with every movement, I felt droplets of sweat form and ran down from my forehead. Even if an eyewitness wouldn’t think I was nervous, I definitely was nervous.

But, again, that thing didn’t possess 1% of the power of a [God]:

“[Summon: Chenoo, Venomous Fake Spear]”, I conjured a pair of [Level: 20] humanoids creatures just as tall as me, and were indistinguishable from a human, but their mouths didn’t show any lips, and displayed multiple rows of pointy scary-looking teeth; I decided that, at least for me and my summmons, shields would be pointless during that fight, and we would need something big enough to pierce all of the fur, skin and fat, so a spear for each of us (and, about the venom? Really, there’s no reason not to use it, right?).

As my summons and I run around the arena to encircle the boss, Hunah advanced straight against the creature, and the monster slapped her with its huge front-clawed paw. Instead of lifting her shield, however, my sister brandished her flail against the paw: the damage was minimum, merely minus a hundred points to the shield or so, but a killing blow wasn’t her intention from the beginning anyway, and as soon as the massive boss’ paw touched the spiked [Doedicurus] flail-tail, my sister jumped, and was hurled safely away from the giant monster’s attack by the head of her weapon, who flew bypassing her, pulling the non-anchored user.

Hunah distracted the boss for just enough time so my summons and I started to climb every side of the monster but its front; scaling the moving furry creature with just one hand, holding the spear with another, wasn’t an easy task, but I overcame the bumps and shakes, and stood on the monster’s back. The option to run straight to the thing’s head was tempting, but I refused, not wanting to get in the reach of the front paws, and stabbed as hard as I could the area just over the hinder leg of the boss, my summons attacking at the same time.

“GROOOOW!”, the boss roared, torturing to the ears. It was enraged, its shield being depleted by the second, but I just pulled the spear up, and stabbed again, the translucent green blade forcing the magical shield to decompose in sparks flying off the boss’ body.

Then passing to focus on me, the boss purposefully topped over, trying to crush the ones on its back. But I was already expecting that, and quickly jumped away along with all my summons. We, however, left our spears behind, and though they quickly broke upon impact, they were pushed deeper, and caused even more damage, if only for a second.

Not only that, as soon as the belly of the giant monster was exposed, Hunahd showed up again, and immediately threw her flail on it, green sparks flying all around, as the spiked ball caused massive damage to the shield.

“[Summon...]” I was summoning a new set of spears, when the tables suddenly turned; for the boss got up on its hinder legs, towering absolutely over the entire battlefield, and fell back with its front paws on the ground, the shock wave so intense, that everyone but the boss itself was lifted from arena-turned-trampoline. On the air, I saw the back of the boss paw coming for me, and quickly changed my spell: “[… Chenoo, fake shield]”.

Not only my own shield, but I used the same strategy from the 1st floor, and un-made my scattered summons, and re-summoned them before me, all holding their own shields to cushion the impact.

The monsters I called for, and their shield, exploded like balloons filled with water when touching the back of the boss pawn, and they didn’t seem to diminish the strength of the attack at all: when the hit reached me the result wasn’t much different, and my semi-transparent green shield immediately broke, and the paw hit my body.

Then, my left arm’s bones weren’t simply fractured, but completely un-made, ground to dust, and I was sure that the shoulder blade of the same side wasn’t where it was supposed to be anymore.

I survived, however, so my strategy must have had worked, and there was no time to waste, for I was fucking falling from the arena:

“[Summon: fake shield]”, I conjured the disc behind me, and jumped from it, calling for another one just after: “[Summon: fake shield]”, this way, I made my way up the borders of the arena once again; and just in time to see Hunah doing the same, but with the help of her flail instead. My sister looked just as beaten as me, her pretty shield completely shattered and broken.

The pain was indescribable already, and was it kept pilling up, but we still had a lot of boss’ shield to go through. And, while I had just spent quite a lot of [Magic] just to survive that one hit, the giant monster was already attacking again: he ran on its fours after me.

“We can’t stay on the defensive”, I said, and conjured: “[Summon: Gyrfalcon, Grey wolf]”, the [level: 2] birds flew straight towards the giant monster’s face, and though the damage they could cause wasn’t even worth mention, they managed to force the boss to close its eyes, and stop its charge (certainly for fear of falling down the arena); all the while, three [Level: 10] agile canids lunged on the boss legs.

“You broke my shield!”, Hunah screamed, bashing her spiked-ball-weapon on one of the monster’s paws.

“Yeah, you were the first thing that came to my mind too, Hunah, thank you…”, I laughed, trying to not sound as terrified as I was; at the same time, I summoned me a hatchet.

“Come on, how would you feel if this boss took one of your summons permanently from you?”

“Understandable”, I replied, dashing to one of the constantly stomping paws, and slashing.

After this, it didn’t take much longer for a glass shattering-like sound to echo; the signal that the shield had finally completely broken, and we could finally start to hurt the big fucker.

Things had only then gotten serious, however, after all of that mauling, pocking, smashing and biting on the giant monster; drawing the thing’s blood and tearing its flesh, continuously hurting the last floor’s boss; for, as we reached halfway through its [Health Bar], it finally unlocked its true strength:

[Species: (D - boss) Megatherium, Level: 60

HP: 2445/5000 (0)]

“GROOONNNWW!”, the boss displayed such lung power, that it stunned my summoned birds, who fell on the ground and died, and it hurt my wolves, chipping away a couple of their [Health Points]. As a red aura involved the giant beast, it turned against us with renewed and rage-empowered strength.