Joshua quickly leaped back to stand with Tank just in case the gorilla tried to go in for an attack while Tank was busy regaining his footing. Tank's high vitality allowed him to keep up with the fierce strength of the gorilla, but even Tank would take some heavy damage from all of the punches to the face he had taken while biting into the gorilla's body. The damage the gorilla had taken wasn't little either. It had several wounds all over its body as well from Tanks biting alongside Joshua's large cut across one of its eyes. At this point its eye had mostly healed back, but it had several other wounds that were starting to slow it down.
All of the vines in the room had fallen to the blizzard that Isabella had casted at this point and all of the fruit up above along the ceiling were now useless. The gorilla would have to rely on its own natural regeneration for the rest of the fight which gave Joshua's group a large advantage. At least that was the case for the moment, but based off of how the gorilla seemed to react to the gun shot Joshua knew that something was up. He turned to see that all of the monkeys that had rushed over to try to take down Isabella had all been killed off by Laura, Adrian, and the rest of the group. Apparently the gun shot was what killed the final monkey.
As Joshua was turning to look and see what happened with the monkeys he suddenly heard a painful roar that came from the direction of where Cinder, Amy, and Madalyn had been fighting the orangutan. Joshua quickly turned in the direction and could see that the roar had come from the now dying orangutan. It had several wounds all over its body that seemed to be festering with poison that Madalyn had most likely caused. A couple of its arms had clearly been ripped off by Cinder as they hung from the ceiling in Cinder's webbing. There were also all sorts of deep bruises along the orangutan's body that proved it had a lot of internal bleeding. That was most likely his sister's work.
It didn't take long for the situation to start to take a turn for the worse. All of the dead bodies around the room from the apes started to break down and turn into dust. It was similar to what happened with the monkeys when they fought them in town. The dust started to float in the air and head for the gorilla creating a large spiral cloud in the process that blocked off the vision of the gorilla.
'Josh can you take that Gorilla out before it finishes doing whatever the hell its doing?' Henry asked a bit pissed off at the fact that there was another stage to the fight that was starting to seem impossible to avoid.
'I doubt it. The pressure it's giving off at the moment is making it impossible for me to approach.' Joshua responded as he was not only hit by a wave of killing intent, but also a large amount of wind that was tearing up everything around the cloud of dust. All of the vines nearby were being ripped out of the ground and pulled into the small storm like structure. They disintegrated the moment they touched the cloud of dust only making it grow bigger. Luckily all of the vines seemed to be dead after being frozen by Isabella. At least they wouldn't have to worry about the vines being able to hinder them while they were taking on the boss anymore.
Soon the large cloud of dust started to grow smaller and smaller as the pressure started to vanish. As the cloud shrunk the area it left behind looked barren of anything but stone and even that seemed cracked and greatly damaged. Eventually the cloud had shrunk down to the point where they could all see the gorilla in all of its glory and they could tell from past boss fights that the gorilla had been put in an enraged state. Usually when bosses were in an enraged state their bodies would give off steam as what amounted to basically a timer until they were going to run out of gas and return to normal. The gorilla however had no signs of that.
The dust had finished settling down allowing everyone to see the gorilla's now purple fur and bright red eyes. It let out an enraged roar as all of its previous wounds had healed before rushing forward in clear madness. The good side to this was the fact that it had clearly lost its intelligence support from the orangutan and would be easy to lead along, but the issue was going to be the fact that the gorilla seemed so much more powerful. As its fist slammed into the ground as it rushed over they could all see that the gorilla's strength had gone up quite a bit since it was able to crack the stone floor that previously was able to take all of their rampaging earlier in the fight.
'We need to keep it in place long enough so that the mages can do some damage. If we can wear it down enough to where its core is exposed then I can go in for the kill.' Joshua explained getting nods in response. 'The only issue is going to be keeping it in place long enough. It seems to be mimicking Titus's primal rage ability.'
'If that's the case then we need to use its rage to our advantage. It doesn't know who the prime target to go after is so it will probably just go after the biggest one. Tank won't be able to take it on one on one anymore, so will have to use their clash to our advantage.' Henry explained.
Before anyone could say anything else the gorilla was about to meet Tank in combat once more. Joshua rushed over as well to give Tank support knowing full well that he wasn't going to be able to stop the brunt of the gorilla's charge on his own. When Tank and the boss collided the entire room shook, but it quickly became clear that the gorilla had a massive advantage as Tank was being shoved back towards the rest of the group. The gorilla's tail was about to try to pierce through Tank's head for a quick kill, but Joshua leaped in front and blocked it with his scale blade. The force of the blow sent Joshua crashing towards the ground even though he was only attempting to deflect the blow instead out right out stopping it.
Tank eventually dug his back legs into the ground to stop the gorilla's push, but his opponent had two sets of arms and the second pair was about to try to lift him and toss him into the rest of the group. This would have been easy for the gorilla if not for two things. First was the fact that Lilly was around to help Tank out in the fight this time around. When she saw that Tank was being manhandled at the moment she stepped into give her partner an advantage.
Lilly used her armoring ability that created stone armor around Tanks body that greatly increased his weight making it much harder for the gorilla to move him. The armor was made of the stone on the floor of the room which was sturdy enough to only be cracked by the gorilla's rampaging, which meant it would be able to hold off several blows in their close quarter's confrontation. The armor may have slowed Tank down, but he didn't rely on speed in his battles. Instead he used subtle movements along with quick snapping bites to do his damage in the fight.
The second advantage Tank had in the fight this time around was the fact that he wasn't the only beast partner around this time that was going after the gorilla. Cinder leaped down from the ceiling at the gorilla's exposed back as it tried to pummel through Tank's new armor. The gorilla's scorpion tail was being occupied by Joshua at the moment so Cinder had a clear shot and took it as she bit harshly into the gorilla's neck. It quickly used one of its arms to throw her off its shoulder, but the poison had already been injected and Cinder webbed her way back up to the ceiling. She started bombarding the gorilla with large icicles while Tank clamped down on what of its arms.
While Joshua was dealing with the tail he deflected it so that the tail would pierce into the ground beneath him. He smashed scale blade through it and pinned part of it to the ground so that it couldn't be taken away too quickly. Both Laura and Adrian took this opportunity to rush towards the base of the tail as Adrian cut along the weak points leaving openings so that Laura's could damage the tail even more with her heated blade. The combination worked well as the tail started to slow down in its movements giving Joshua the chance to let it go and rush to the base of it as well. Adrian and Laura created a large gash at the base of the gorilla's tail that was more than enough for Joshua to work with.
Joshua used an aura blast to cut into the gash and blow the tail off completely causing the large gorilla to roar in pain. Cinder took this as an opportunity to leap down and bite down hard onto one of its free arms. Her weight put the large gorilla off balance as Tank slammed into it shoving it back and further away from the group. At this point there were several injuries along the gorilla that were trying to heal, but one of its arms was extremely damaged from both Cinder and Tank chomping on it while the poison rushing through its system was causing the gorilla to slow down a bit as well.
Before the gorilla could rush in for another attack a large bombardment of spells slammed into it shoving it further back and wounding it some more. Tank used this opportunity to slam his full weight into the gorilla while Cinder started working on another arm. Joshua was starting to see that the gorilla was going to be completely overwhelmed in the fight at this point. Although it had the strength and power to toss Cinder around and slam Tank into the ground repeatedly it wasn't being given the opportunity. When it went after Tank Cinder would come in and attack taking its attention away, when it went after her Tank came in and knocked it off balance so the group could take more shots at it.
That didn't even take in consideration the fact that Joshua, Laura, and Adrian had taken out its tail which was the gorilla's most dangerous weapon. The tail could have skewered Cinder or pierced through Tank's armor if given the chance, but now that wasn't an option. To make matters worse Lily had used her frenzy ability to empower her beast companions even more which made it harder and harder on the gorilla. Eventually its regeneration couldn't keep up and its core was exposed giving Joshua the opportunity he needed. With one quick blink and fully charged will infused aura blast the core was fractured into pieces.