Novak winced as he felt his body being crushed by the stone around him.
Still, he did not panic and instead focused on escaping. He'd been in plenty of tough situations before and this was far from the worst.
Activating several skills at once, he felt a surge of power coursing through his body. At level fifty-four, Novak was expectantly strong and was not going to be contained by normal material.
Under the strain of Novak's might, the stone around him began to crack.
Then with one massive push with all his limbs, he fractured the enclosing ceiling and opened up a hole to escape from.
Unfortunately, this had him falling back towards the murky water below without any means of stopping himself.
A couple of seconds later he found himself plunging back into the pungent water that smelled of rot and death.
At this point he would have loved a moment to clean off and get the vile taste of tainted water and blood out of his mouth. Yet even submerged under water he could hear and feel the impact of his party's battle with the undead mass of trees.
As Endless Horizons' leader, Novak knew he could not sit back while everyone else was fighting. No matter how much he wanted a few seconds to recover, he knew that time was in short supply.
Novak kicked his legs hard against the water and propelled himself out of it.
When he finally surfaced, he saw the four other members of his party fighting against the monster that had lodged him into the ceiling with a single kick.
Thankfully none of them looked particularly injured. Landyn was focusing on keeping the creature's attention and allowing Clay, Emerie, and Jovie to attack.
The damage that they were inflicting on the amalgamation of rotting trees was not amounting to much though.
Every one of their blows splintered its body, but a sludge-like sap seeped out of its body and quickly began restoring its form. Even the arm that Novak had severed into several pieces, which was only one eight, was already around halfway to being fully recovered.
Watching this Novak wished that he or one of his party members could use magic. Sadly, none of them had the talent for it and he had never gotten around to trying to recruit a dedicated mage. For any monster that they needed to use magic against, they had gotten by with spell sealing talismans or wands.
From what he could see, none of the items they had on hand were going to be close to powerful enough to bring down a monster like this.
"We'll just have to bust through it faster than it can heal then!" Novak shouted, both to inspirit himself and his party members.
He slashed through the air with his claw blades and sent six mana slashes flying towards the gigantic creature.
His attack was ultimately intercepted by one of the monster's thick arms and left little more than a few deep scratches, but Novak was not disheartened.
The water once again embraced him as he fell, but the second he had something he could find purchase on he kicked off and angled himself towards one of the nearby walls.
In an acrobatic feat similar to what Emerie was accomplishing, Novak bounced from one wall to the other and returned to the main battle.
"You've already revealed yourself, so that's not going to work."
In her crossbow, a brightly glowing bolt shone with silver light.
This was her strongest trump card and replacing it was likely to cost her eighty percent of her cut from this job's reward.
As she pressed the trigger on her weapon, the bolt flew at an incredible speed and sunk into the center of the monster's body.
At first it seemed that the bolt did practically no damage. Until it exploded in a cacophonous burst of sound that blew the wood around it apart.
Having the core of its body destroyed, the monstrous amalgamation of trees was no longer able to get up.
The corrupt sap within it attempted to mend the damage, but even its powerful regenerative abilities could not repair the loss of its central truck.
Several splashes followed the defeat of their main enemy as every member of Endless Horizons fell into the repulsive water below.
After unleashing everything they had in a last-ditch effort to defeat their enemy, all of them were nearly out of energy.
What little strength they had was focused on their surroundings. The main threat may have been down, but the monster controlling the walls was still around. All of them were expecting it to attack them while they were still exhausted.
Except it did not make a move, for it had no need to.
As Novak and his party members kept an eye out for an attack, they disregarded the body of the monster they had already defeated. Certainly, it was unable to continue fighting, but it had one final move to play.
The wooden debris in the water began to pulsate and swell. Soon the energy inside of them had reached its limit and several explosions of necrotic energy enveloped the area.
Novak felt his blood turn cold, and a horrible pain racked his entire body as he was hit by the explosions.
He watched as his veins turned black and his skin turned gray in multiple places.
When the explosion eventually died down, he found himself still alive, but in incredibly rough shape.
Floating on top of the water nearby, he saw that his companions were in a similar or even worse condition.
Being heavily armored, Jovie and Landyn began to sink now that they had lost even the strength to tread water.
Pushing himself, Novak swam towards them, yet his progress was quickly halted.
Something from below was wrapped around his leg and he felt it begin to drag him underwater.
With one last look before being pulled below the surface, he saw that the rest of his companions were sinking as well. The monster that had been manipulating the structure of the sewer had reached out from below and grabbed all of them. Now that they were too weak to resist, it would drag them all to a watery grave.
'I guess this is the end.' Novak thought as he felt his consciousness waning. They put up a good fight, but it had not been enough.
Except just as he had given up, he felt whatever had held him loosened and suddenly he was yanked out of the water.
"It looks like you guys could use some help. I hope you don't mind if I cut in."