Chapter 20: Dance of Death

Zarian found himself in a more extravagant atrium that hyped up the themes of the White Spider Dungeon. There was no doorway behind him. It was as if he was repositioned by magic the moment he’d stepped into the boss’s room.

Thankfully, his Parasite Cloak and the goblin skeletons were with him.

The concave ceiling was higher. It was covered in a glistening array of crystal webs that shone mainly white with tiny hints of other vibrate hues. It was like an entire universe shaped into a complex web. Beneath that was a circular platform floating above pitch-black darkness.

Several curved bridges connected the central platform to the outer walkway circling along the wall of the immense atrium. Every fifty feet around the wall, Zarian saw fuzzy statues that appeared to be a spider carved from stone.

Thankfully, most of the lighting here was dim, leaning more toward darkness and gravitas than clear spotlighting. So he could see some details here and there.

There was one beaming ray of light shining down at the giant boss monster sitting on a cushioned throne made of webs, skeletons, and rusted loot. The boss had the face of a woman and the body of a spider. She was completely pale white with a shapely face, platinum hair, and sparkly body.

Her face was beautiful, while her eyes were closed.

Then she opened all eight eyes around the upper-half of her face. Her puffy lips peeled to reveal her spider-like fangs. Her jaws stretched open further in monstrous delight, revealing more fangs.

Then the boss rose from her webbed throne of corpses and loot, reaching ten feet in height with spider legs that reached out twenty feet in all directions.

Zarian grinned from ear to ear and waved his free hand in greeting.

Reiki of the White Silk Dancers tilted her head to the side, acidic drool leaking from her fanged mouth.

She raised a front leg and copied the motion, waving at Zarian in return. He barely caught the motion through his fuzzy vision but he was certain she was waving. She was pleasantly polite for a horrific monster.

“So, Reiki, I see I’m getting the Dark Souls treatment,” Zarian said. “Does that come with music?”

“Of course!” Zarian laughed as he walked up an arched bridge to reach the platform.

Most wizards would’ve stayed on the outer walkway, shooting their shots from afar. Zarian might’ve taken that approach, too, if he hadn’t been mostly brain dead.

The logical approach could go kick rocks. Nothing could stop his pounding heart and inflamed spirit from going wild. He wanted his first boss fight up close and personal.

The System played thematic music from the darkness below and from the countless dewy lights above. The music was loud enough to have a grand effect on the mood, but not too loud to be distracting.

Hell, it sounded like Zarian and Reiki had their own orchestra that changed the tempo, melody, and beat according to their actions. This was building up to be a real fine shindig of a boss battle.

Zarian reached the main platform. It was three hundred feet wide. There was plenty of space to move around.

Grinning, he moved forward at a jogging pace, straight to Reiki. His body burned from the past exertion leading up to this point. Zarian didn’t care and kept pushing himself.

Behind him, Para wavered like a tattered flag in the wind, long, loose, and seemingly unimportant. His floating grimoire shone with a ghastly green light, dragged through the air behind him by spectral chains bound to his soul.

A little further back, the skeletons rattled as they followed his lead.

As Zarian reached the halfway point between him and the boss, he secured his hood over his head before he fixed a tight grip on the handle of his seven-foot nodachi.

The music quieted.

Then the bass dropped.

Reiki turned her large body around with the grace of an actual dancer. She balanced on one leg, kicking out the others as she pirouetted. Bright white magic – her aura, perhaps – flowed behind her spider legs in curving streams before she slammed back down with a thunder clap.

A solid wave of concussive energy flowed along the ground. Zarian ran straight at it while forming a rising slope of dense darkness in front of him.Alll latest novels on novelbin/(.)com

He ran up the dark slope as the concussive wave obliterated it from under his feet. He lunged over in the nick of time, his Parasite Cloak fluttering behind him.

Meanwhile, his skeletons threw themselves into the air to hop over. Three of them made it. Two scattered away into smashed pieces with the magic shock wave. They wouldn’t be able to recover from that.

Zarian fell to the floor off balanced. Parasite tendrils slapped down and straightened him up while Zarian refocused his fuzzy vision on the boss and recognized her spiraling again, performing another dance.

When she refaced him, a sharp white glow covered the ends of all her spider legs.

The Parasite Cloak wrapped the front of the bridge with tendrils, securing Zarian as he used the magic in his Surface Walker Boots to glue his feet in place. As he rose above Reiki on his bridge of darkness, he torqued at the hips and swung a big slash from behind and down to his left.

He nearly broke his arms. His wrists felt like they were about to snap. He felt a few fingers twist the wrong way.

He still held onto the seven-foot nodachi as it hacked through three spider legs and left a nasty cut on the fourth. Reiki screamed as she tumbled to the side, thrashing about.

The music kept rising and rising to its climax.

Zarian dismissed the slanted dark bridge and landed softly with Para’s help next to Reiki’s thrashing body. The Dungeon Boss twisted around, ramming her face onto the floor to remove the two skeletons holding on by sheer grit. The impacts weren’t hard enough as the skeletons kept attacking to avenge their fallen comrades.

“Dance of the Final Web Entombment,” Zarian said, speaking more from the soul than the mind. “Without your legs, you can’t use that skill, can you? If you’re able to revive yourself, we should run this back so you can show it to me. I bet it’s a beautiful skill.”

Reiki stopped fighting after hearing those words. “Yes, I revive, then encore,” she hissed in agreement. “Encore.”

“Encore,” Zarian repeated, before shooting up into the air on a rising dark pillar.

His Parasite Cloak flapped and fluttered, expanding so wide the cloak’s shadow swallowed up Reiki’s body.

The skeletons untangled themselves from Reiki’s hair and dashed off as Zarian dipped the seven-foot nodachi under his cloak’s shadow.

He lengthened the weapon. He made it denser, thicker, and a little wider.

Reiki smiled, face-smeared with her own blood. She sucked in a deep, hoarse breath, then breathed out a thin but quick webbed torrent at the falling monster of a wizard.

The music reached its crescendo.

Zarian dove head first at the torrent before twisting and rolling mid air. His Parasite Cloak ripped apart into a fleshy, festooned explosion of tendrils and whips, smacking loose ends off of the torrent and diverting Zarian at the same time.

He rotated through the air in a storm of whips, a fifteen-foot nodachi held by him and Para. Together, they swung the immense and dense sword around from behind him like a windmilling blade.

Reiki’s head flew off with a fountain of blood bursting free from the body. The head thumped, rolled, and smacked to a stop at the base of her throne.

Zarian dropped the nodachi, letting it fade off into dark motes. He hurtled toward the ground without Para’s help since she burned up a lot of fuel in the boss fight.

Thankfully, his two skeletons waited with arms raised to catch him from below. Once caught, they set him on his feet.

He broke free of their bony grasp and walked like he was the undead himself. He stumbled and tripped a few times, but remained upright on his way to the throne.

He grabbed Reiki’s hair and dragged her head up onto the sticky throne. Ignoring his broken fingers, fractured arm bones, and torn ligaments, he placed the head on top of the seat before tumbling down the throne.

His skeletons caught him again, and this time he didn’t break away.

“Thanks, boys, and thanks, Para,” Zarian said before he aimed a bloody smile up at Reiki’s head. “And thanks, Reika, for my first boss fight. I can barely see a thing, but you still look nice on your throne. Let’s dance again! Encore, encore!”

Reiki’s lifeless, bodiless head looked down at Zarian with a dead gaze. Then a glint of recognition and life shone through. The head’s lower face shifted.

Reiki gave Zarian a bright and monstrous smile.

The music closed out.

Zarian nearly collapsed, eyes closing for a few seconds. When he opened his eyes again, he wasn’t in the arena anymore. He had no idea where he was now.

That didn’t matter much compared to the dangerous darkness encroaching around his vision. The type of darkness that might end him once and for all.

Before he faced his fate, he looked over and saw three treasure chests waiting for him to open up. He received a few gold notifications, too.

SSS! You didn’t strive for perfection. You didn’t even fight like a wizard should! Instead, you put on a marvelous performance! You’ve engaged Reiki like nobody has in a solo battle – or dance – against her while at a lower level. BRAVO!>

SSS Dance with White Silk Reiki (Unopened)!>