3.37 – Boss

3.37 – Boss

With a greeting like that, the last of Natalie’s doubts were dispelled. Sofia’s exasperated suggestion that her class might make the bosses perverted was clearly not true—or at least not for this encounter. The dryad seemed far more interested in turning them into forest fertilizer than anything.

Natalie didn’t waste a moment, seeing the dryad raise her staff. She charged forward. The four patches of dirt in each cardinal direction meant something, but she kept that in the back of her mind—she couldn’t know exactly what until it revealed itself.

Quickly covering distance toward the dryad, her opponent raised her staff into the air in reply, pointing the shaft of wood skyward. Her previously blue eyes turned white, vibrating with energy, and power gathered at the tip, humming to Natalie’s magical senses—and then a half-second later, to her physical eyesight too, as crackling white sparks manifested on the gnarled tip of the staff.

The hair on the back of her neck raised, and instinct alone told her what to do. She flung herself sideways, her plan for charging head-first into the dryad relegated to second priority.

A second later, searing white lighting erupted into the ground exactly where Natalie had been headed. A thunderous clap echoed through the air, enough to leave her ears ringing, and Natalie briefly wondered how well she would have held up against a lighting strike.

Bosses weren’t called bosses without a reason—they were by the far the most common way for experienced delvers to find their careers abruptly cut off. Being roasted in a single shot wasn’t fully off the table. Though, a durable class like Natalie probably wouldn’t die in a single hit. Liz or Jordan, though? More likely, at least for a strong charge-up attack like that.

Which was why it was so important Natalie kept the dryad’s attention. She’d flung herself recklessly sideways, knowing she absolutely had to avoid whatever incoming attack had been gathering at the dryad’s staff tip, but she still recovered smoothly, turning her tumble sideways into a roll and finally staggering to her feet. The powerful spell hadn’t been free; the dryad’s eyes were still fading from their blinding white and back to their natural color, recovering from the expenditure of mana.

Natalie cobbled together her own key spell. Illusions shimmered around her body, growing limbs and weapons where they didn’t exist. They were less refined than in her fight against Elida, because she didn’t use [Empower]. Burning progression points whenever she fought a boss simply wasn’t wise—that powerful ability needed to be saved for moments that truly mattered. If things turned sour, then obviously she would tap into that expensive resource, but if at all possible, she wanted to handle this with her base class.

Natalie arrived to the tall green woman right as she finished recovering from her lightning spell. Lowering her staff and gripping it two-handed, she swung in a wide arc before Natalie could get her own attack out.

It was a reasonable assumption, and a fairly common mechanic in a boss arena, so Natalie sprinted for one of the dirt patches. Sofia, just a bit slower than her, having been trying to break the protective white spell, threw herself the last several feet, the energy in the air building and the dryad’s special attack clearly starting to manifest. Natalie grunted as she caught the white-haired girl and stopped her from tumbling past the edge of the small patch of dirt.

A second later, lightning crashed down in a torrent. Dozens or hundreds of the booming streaks of light scalded the grass of the arena, so numerous and frequent the noise overlapped into one world-ending cacophony. A primal instinct had her clamping her wrists onto her ears—her hands were full—in an attempt to block the sound out. Even with her eyes closed, too, the flood of light turned her eyelids red.

Finally, several seconds later, the barrage ended, and the dryad sagged, nearly falling to her knees. The spell had drained her.

Which, of course, meant an opportunity for retaliation.

Natalie didn’t waste a second—she charged forward. The powerful lightning barrage had expended the dryad far more than her previous spells, and Natalie was rewarded with a satisfying thunk as she crashed her hammer straight into the creature’s skull. Still, it was a boss monster, and insanely durable—it only sent the dryad stumbling sideways and climbing to her feet to recover.

The fight progressed that way for some time. Several times more, the dryad called that same ultimate attack down, and the team needed to go rushing to the nearest small patches of dirt. There were a few close calls, with the timing window shrinking with each follow up. Bosses tended to get stronger as they got weaker, the opposite of how fights ought to work.

Still, they were well-prepared for this fight, even having some of their gear stolen. The whittled the boss down, bit by bit. Ana’s spells of black energy tore into green flesh, Sofia danced between retaliatory strikes and poked and slashed, and Jordan delivered occasional devastating sneak attacks.

Ana was the one who claimed the finishing blow. A cascade of thick black-energy spikes burst from the ground, impaling the dryad in dozens of places—namely, one straight through her chest.

“Insolent,” the dryad repeated balefully, glaring at Ana for a long, suspended moment—then her face went slack, and the creature finally disintegrated into motes of energy.