They slowly make their way through the rest of the dungeon, finding another six of the bears, before eventually they come to a large area. Resting in the middle of the cavernous space is a massive bear.

The bear has to be a good deal over three meters tall, and seems even more bulky than the smaller ones, but the group isn’t going to underestimate its speed simply due to its size. They carefully approach, Julie only setting up one array to have some images to try and distract the massive beast.

As they approach, the same thing that had happened with the small bears repeats itself. This time though, the wind is far, far stronger. The entire group is nearly bowled over, only managing to keep to their feet with Sen reducing the wind coming towards them.

As they close in on the wind bear, it’s even faster than the smaller ones, and Sen barely manages to get his sword interposed between himself and the bear’s paw as it flies towards him. Unlike the smaller bears, this one seems to have much better control of the wind, reducing all the air resistance from its strikes, which is likely where the extra speed comes from.

Sen’s block sparks against the massive claws of the boss, and he’s sent sliding. While the bear’s strikes are still very light for its size, they still carry a massive amount of force. He charges back in, and notices that the bear is entirely ignoring the images, likely using its wind control to realize they’re fake.

This bear’s hide is thankfully only a little tougher than the smaller bears, and the first sword strikes cause it to bleed. They slowly start to chip down on its health, but when it gets wounded to a certain point, it creates an explosion of air, sending the group flying away from it.

Rather than chase down the couple of them that have fallen, it opens its mouth. It roars, and the sound is far louder than it has any right to be. The group is instantly clutching their ears, which thankfully don’t have their eardrums broken, though Sen thinks it’s a close thing.

As everyone is disoriented from the massive sound, ears ringing, the bear charges towards Jennifer, and its swipe isn’t entirely blocked by her, taking a few deep wounds in her shield arm.

She steps out of the fight, not able to block any more blows with her shield arm disabled, and when the bear turns to Kang, he panics a bit, slowing down with his blocking as the bear strikes from above.

The delay makes his unstable shield slam his shield into his head, and he goes entirely limp. Sen is worried about him, but figures that his type of people tend to survive anything, and he isn’t turning into blue sparkles anyway.

The group instantly starts to harry the bear to distract it, but as it sweeps towards Xue, it lets out another of those roars, and the bear’s strike impacts onto her chest.

“No!” Sen shouts, but she’s still knocked back with a cracking sound coming from her ribs. Sen isn’t sure if she’s going to die from that. Even with the bone enhancement skills, such a heavy strike is sure to have done a lot of damage.

Lynna, the closest person, tries to interpose herself between the two of them, and starts to stop the bear from capitalizing on it and finishing off the prone Xue. Sen is enraged, and does something that he’s never tried before.

While he’s used both Cutting Squall and Weight of the Mountain, in his anger, he simply puts both of those patterns into his body and sword as he slams it down with all the force his energy strengthened body can handle.

Rather than fizzling out, which is what Sen would have expected if he’d been more sober minded, an image appears over the blade. Rather than the mountain that normally appears with Weight of the Mountain, his sword turns practically invisible, but is completely covered by a blurry image.

Sen hadn’t been entirely clear with his mental image with his strike. While normally he envisions a massive mountain crashing down with one of them, and his sword blending into the wind with the other, this time he’s imagining pure death for the wind bear.

The image that appears is blood red, and looks like a massive jagged mountain peak in a deep red color with crimson clouds surrounding it. As his sword crashes into the beast, it easily cuts through the first layers of skin and fat before hitting bone.

The bones aren’t even much of an obstruction to the powerful blow, slicing through them and into the organs of the boss. It turns to him, and tries to roar again, but this time it comes out far more pitifully, one of its lungs ruptured.

Sen tries to repeat the strike, but his mind a bit confused as to why that had worked, simply has his blow fizzle, only cutting a bit into the bosses nose. It still rears back, sending both of its paws together in an attempt to squish Sen.

The blow falters however, when both Lynna and Jennifer use their skills that create images of icicles over their swords, and plunge them into the beast. While Lynna’s blow is stopped by bone, Jennifer’s is launched into the wound Sen had made, puncturing the vulnerable organs.

The delay in its blow lets Sen Gale Step out of range, and as the bear turns to Jennifer this time, it collapses halfway through the turn. The group then instantly turns to the wounded. While Xue is conscious, she’s wincing, probably regretting the thirty percent pain setting, and Kang is completely unconscious. Jennifer still has her sword arm, and sheathes her blade before applying a high level healing salve to her shield arm.

Sen grabs a high level healing potion for internal injuries, and holds it to Xue’s lips after raising her body a bit. She gingerly drinks the brew, a grimace on her face from the pain and the bitter tasting drink.

As they all make their way out of the dungeon via the teleport array, they’re greeted by wry smiles from the group of Team Cloud.

“Yeah, we wiped on the boss the first time, but if you bring earplugs he’s a hell of a lot easier,” LostMind decides to inform them a bit late.

The group all glares at them for not having warned them beforehand, but the members of Team Cloud simply shrug, one of them looking a bit disappointed at the fact that they didn’t wipe. Sen’s group slowly makes their way back to the vehicle after handing over one of the crystals, Sen carrying Kang in a fireman’s carry, while Xue simply logs off so as to heal.