Luke Everhart
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Chapter 223 - Crystal Preserve Us...
🕑 Added 2025-03-21 11:37:27 +0000 UTC“The healer, a caster and a warg, a shield goblin and four spear goblins,” Kur listed. “Damn it… I didn’t expect them to run back to the boss.”
“I’m more surprised that the boss didn’t come out here,” Tuk said, scanning the fallen goblins strewn across the ice coated cavern. “Why wait until they’re half dead?”
“There’s always a reason,” Gad said, her face stoic as Kur dabbed some kind of pungent cloth against her frozen cut. “Maybe it can’t leave its room.”
“What?” Mul said, frowning. “Why in the Pile not?”
“Some monsters and beasts are stationary,” Kur explained, dipping more healing ointment onto the cloth. “And some others are confined to specific locations. Happens a lot with bosses, actually.”
He rubbed off the last of the ice and put away both the cloth and ointment bottle.
“There, not as good as a potion, but it will do,” Kur said. “Sucks we don’t have anything for ice damage…”
“It’s warming up already,” Gad said, glazing down at the cut. “I’m sure [Frozen] will go away soon.”
And indeed, her wound had started to bleed a thin trickle of very dark red, almost black, blood, but what it didn’t do however, and despite her massive 66 points of [Constitution], was immediately start closing back up, knitting her dark scales back together, as such a shallow cut should have done.
“Don’t worry,” Gad said, looking around her at the party. “It doesn’t bother me, and we need to decide what to do.”
“Should we rest and come back tomorrow?” Viy asked.
“No!” Kur shouted. “I mean, I’m tempted to do it, but we don’t know if there are more ice goblins out there, and now they know we’re here. We also don’t know for how long those tree guardians are going to stay scared behind that ravine… They might find their courage at any time, and I don’t want to risk anything else killing this boss. Just to make sure nothing else goes wrong, it has to be us, and it has to be done today. Now.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Mul asked.
Gad grunted as she stood up, and when Kur sighed the tank squeezed his shoulder.
“When we don’t know what we’re facing, we can only do our best,” Gad said. “And return to the basics.”
“You mean our old formation?” Kur asked, frowning at her.
“As an opener, yes,” Gad said. “Me at the front, Mul and Viy on either side. Jul sticks with you, and together you two protect Cen, who can then cast without worry. Then Tuk and Rel, keeping our enemy from getting focused and organized, and in the end, Nar…”
And she grinned at him. “Doing whatever needs doing.”
Nar muttered something unintelligible, but didn’t counter the tank.
“The basic strategy. Go in, kill the ads first, and then we can focus on the boss. And if anything else happens, we’ll figure it out then,” Gad continued. “Debuffs, [Frozen], whatever comes, we’ll handle it.”
Kur passed a hand over his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Ugh… I guess that’s it, isn’t it? What was all of that theory for, then?”
“It has helped us tremendously already, but sometimes you’ve just got to keep it simple,” Gad said, looking around the party. “And don’t think they are the threat here. We’re the ones ending this, and the ones going back home.”
Home? Nar thought. Is that what the Scimitar is, now?
He smiled and stood up.
“Last fight then, yeah?” he asked. “Guess there’s no need to hold back anymore then.”
And grins formed around him, eyes gleaming in the low blue light of the aetheric ice.
“Oh, yeah!” Mul said, smacking a fist into his other hand. “Finally! I’m sick of being careful with my aura!”
“Just… Just don’t bring the whole place down on us, okay?” Kur pleaded, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Alright, guess we’re decided then. Nar, cover us for a bit. I still want to at least assess the situation and see if there’s a solution that doesn’t just involve us going wild.”
“Will do.”
“Alright then, people,” Kur said, scanning his party. “For the last time, let’s actually go and end this.”
“Whoop-whoop!” Tuk said. “We got this, people!”
Gad raised an armored fist into the air. “Kur’s party!”
“Kur’s party!” they all shouted.
“We should find a proper name for the party,” Kur grumbled, as they headed into the darkness. “That just sounds weird.”
“That sounds perfect,” Jul said, tapping his shoulder. “We are, and always will be, Kur’s party.”
“Hmm…” Kur muttered, but Nar could tell he was happy.
As long as we stick together, we can do anything, Nar thought, and shook his head.
Just like the old man always said.
A screech echoed from down the dark path, a slight purple light glinting in the distance, and a cold breeze ruffled his hair. Nar activated his helmet once more and took a deep breath.
Alright. Let’s go see what in the Pile is that thing…
*********
The screech caused Gad’s left eyelid to twitch. She wouldn’t flinch, or grimace, for fear of worrying the party following behind her, but Crystal, her cut hurt, and it hurt bad. And that screech had felt like being cut again, and even deeper than before.
Kur had whipped away the ice as best as he could, using an ointment that was meant for cleaning up infections from dirty, muddy, and poisoned wounds and beast bites and scratches. And while the pungent, herby, aromatic substance did heat up in her wound, her whole arm was still numb, and the ice aether was still there, below the skin, spreading through her flesh, slowing her blood and aura flow, gripping her nerves and muscles, and chilling her down to her very bones as it spread.
But there was no point in telling the others. The potions wouldn’t do anything while the [Frozen] status effect remained, so they would just be wasted on her. And sure, she had advocated for just getting it done, but that was mostly because she could see Kur grinding to a halt, unsure of how to proceed if he knew the true extent of her injury and debuff.
She didn’t blame him for it, of course. More than her, it was Kur that held the fate of the party in his hands, something he was both aware and unaware of in different ways. It was true that he had little combat power outside of his recently gained debuffs, which she knew would grow to become very significant eventually, but it was also true that despite this, it was his orders that they all followed. Even when they went off on their own accord, they usually did so with his say and based on his suggestions both during and before any fight, thanks to his strategizing. But, when faced with a situation he couldn’t plan for, or worse, when someone could get hurt by his orders, he could sometimes freeze up, and needed a little push to get going.
Eh… No pun intended, she thought, grinning to herself. And she had given the push. Now, she could only hope that she would be up for the task, and that they could finish the fight before her arm became completely useless. Or her entire body for that matter.
Fortunately, it’s not my shield arm… she thought, clenching her mace, trying and failing to summon her usual [Strength] to her right-hand fingers. This is ok. This I can work with, so we’ll be alright. You got…
The purple light ahead of her suddenly zoomed into her face, growing larger than her, and threatening to devour her! Then, it receded, fading back into the distance, far, far away, until it was just a tiny pinprick of purple in her white and black [Dark Vision].
She inhaled discreetly, and exhaled just as slowly.
Come on, Gad. Keep it together… She told herself, resisting the urge to shake her head as the purple light returned to its normal, doorway size.
She clenched her jaw. Unlocking her affinity had been… Perhaps the most joyous moment of her entire life. She had peered into that stream, summoned by something greater than her, something beyond her, almost, and she had stared and stared. Though she had known in her soul that what she sought was in there, right in front of her eyes and calling out to her, reaching its hand to take hers, and seeking to be one with her… She hadn’t been able to see it.
Oh! The frustration! The angst! The pain and aching in her soul had nearly driven her mad!
And then Nar, strong, reliable, Nar, had come through for her, like he always did, and by pointing out the little specks of glinting green in the crystal-clear waters of the stream, he had shown her exactly where to look. And what to look at…
The revelation had been… She pressed her eyes shut and opened them again. To say it had been Creation shattering was not an understatement.
Understanding had flown into her, but unlike with the System’s erratic nuggets of information, the knowledge hadn’t felt like it didn’t belong within her mind. If anything, it had felt more like the moment of dumb realization when one realizes the solution to their problem has been within reach all along, merely unnoticed.
And now she knew, and understood the nature, the affinity, of her very soul. But that was also where the issues were stemming from.
Her affinity was messing with her senses, and especially with her [Awareness].
At times, she felt as though she stood nowhere, blind and deaf in an existence of blankness, neither black nor white. At other times, she could sense, hear, and see everything in her proximity with such razor clear focus, such absolute clarity, that her whole mind ground to a halt, unable to take the strain of such sharpness.
That had been the only reason that pesky little goblin had managed to wound her, inflicting its spear tip’s annoying [Frozen] status effect on her.
[Frozen] was slowly sapping both her HP and stamina, and it had no countdown attributed to it. She had failed to resist the effect taking hold, and fire, or something properly hot would be the only way to release her from its spreading, icy grip. Unfortunately, her command of her aura was not yet strong or good enough for her to simply cycle it to warm herself up, as Cen had suggested the previous day, and they didn’t have time to sit around and wait for her to warm up by their heater and defrost her arm. Crystal knew what the new dungeon boss was preparing for them already, the longer they delayed…
It will be fine, she told herself once more. I’ll get them out.
And unlocking her affinity hadn’t just brought her short-term misfortune. Something had opened within her… And though she couldn’t fully control it yet, she was starting to feel as though it was the answer to the biggest problem she had been facing in her path. But she would only be sure of it once she was through that dungeon, and looked upon her dungeon gains and confirmed her affinity…
So let’s do this! She told herself.
And gripping her shield and mace both tightly, one hand stronger than the other, she stepped into the purple light, sensing the party forming up behind her.
The first thing she spotted was the crystal.
It was as though a snake, or a vine, had crawled grotesquely up the opposite wall of the circular cave she now found herself in. The thing pulsed, almost alive, flesh-like, with a dark, smoky purple flowing through it as though it were blood through crystalline veins. And in front of where the veins connected into a large clump of crystal, like a beating heart, standing still as the party entered its room, was the monster they had been looking for… And there was no mistaking the tall, skinny, light gray-blue skinned monster for anything else other than the new dungeon boss.
“What is that?” Cen whispered.
“My Crystal…” Kur breathed. “One of the frozen walking dead! An illatrian!”
The monster craned his neck at the sound of the name of its kind, though his expression remained blank, while at his feet, two, bigger, and pure white wargs regarded the party with a silent, yellow predatory stare.
The monster was, at least to Gad’s eyes, clearly male. He looked like an emancipated, very tall alfin, not unlike what Rel used to look like before finding the Source. His white, wispy hair fell past his shoulders, seemingly floating in the air to the whims of some unseen breeze, and his overthick ribs showed through his naked torso, clearly delineated under his stretched, dead skin, and looking oversized in his otherwise frail appearance. And to complete the look, his arms reached down almost to his knees, as Tuk’s did, and ended in clawed, slender fingers.
And then she saw the weapon in his hand…
“What’s he holding?” Tuk asked, in the heavy silence.
“A glaive,” Viy whispered. “Crystal… That’s not good.”
Gad examined the white weapon in the illatrian’s hand. The shaft had the gleam of metal to it, and she knew now the dangers of that frozen, light blue, curved blade that topped it.
That is going to be a pain, Gad thought. Not only does he have the reach advantage, that weapon looks perfect for crowd control as well.
To make matters worse, the weapon looked perfectly well forged, with none of the cracks and odd shapes that the goblins’ gear had shown. It might actually be the dreaded metallium, and who knew what other tricks and secrets the monster still had in reserve, given how it had debuffed Nar from afar?
“How…” Kur whispered, still floored by the revelation. “How can it be here? That should be in a level 70 dungeon at the very least!”
Suddenly, a window popped open before Gad’s dark, heavy eyes.
-[ Warning!!
Anomaly detected!
Dungeon FORD10-OR-1R-259877 has been corrupted!
You are hereby ordered to terminate and eliminate all corrupted enemies within the dungeon before you can exit.
Warning!!
Final dungeon boss exceeds supported level limits.
Calculating… ]-
“Well, at least it says we can get out,” Rel said.
“Yeah, through that thing!” Viy muttered.
Gad however, fixed the illatrian with a stare. Why isn’t it moving?
Her, thankfully normal and working [Awareness] had pointed out the presence of the healer and the caster to their right, on a rise that dominated that side of the room they now found themselves in. The remaining archer was also with them, and the last two shield goblins, together with the warg that had escaped, were blocking the misshapen steps up to the natural platform.
As for the remaining four spear wilders, they stood in a loose line before the illatrian himself.
“Kur,” Gad called. “To the left.”
“I-I know…” Kur said, exhaling deeply. “Mul and Nar, you guys need to…”
Gad left him to it, confident that now that Kur had eyes on the scene, he would know exactly what to do, and focused back on the boss, just in case it attacked them by surprise.
What’s he waiting for? She wondered once more.
-[ Warning!!
Challenge is too high for the current party!
Warning!!
Limited bonuses available due to presence of aura in delvers!
Awarding applicable bonuses…
All enemies' status will be known.
In the name of the Holy Crystal and the Radiant Ones, eliminate the corrupted! ]-
A shadow flickered over Gad’s eyes as she read through, or mind, she couldn't be sure.
Then her heart dropped as she took in that HP bar above the illatrian’s halo of white hair.
“21,000 HP…” Mul whispered. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The wargs at bosses' feet displayed similarly high statuses, at 4320 HP and 4980 HP respectively for the beast on the left and the one on right of the boss.
“Can we even do this?” Tuk whispered. “Can we even kill that thing?”
The illatrian righted its neck, the bones of his spine cracking, and its eyes blazed light-blue.
“You die… Now,” it croaked at them. “Children of the Radiants.”
Crystal preserve us… Gad thought, her heart sinking as the monster stepped forward, its glaive trailing shimmering mist.
Comments
Faces The Wind
"looked like an emancipated, very tall alfin," emancipated -> emaciated
Lucas Onderwater
A crazy final dungeon boss for their very first dungeon, right? :D
Tristan A
Yeah fucking crazy. It seems like if they were aether users it would have actually given them some sort of empowerment. Considering we know aether users get their power from without and aura comes from within. But since they are aura users they get screwed over. 😒 It could have at least given them some good weapons or something.
Jamal Cheatham
By the God's above and below, this feels like someone might actually just die. This feels just as scary as the spiders on the climb
Uroš
Oh yes, go defeat this impossible boss. To help you with this encounter, we can give you some numbers: He has 21k HP. That's all the help we can give you. Good luck!
