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The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 118
🕑 Added 2025-07-21 22:03:35 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 117 | Index | Chapter 119 >>
Howard tossed knife after knife, and Jenna did her best to blast the flying pieces of bone out of the sky before they could add to the growing conglomeration of bone and mana in the centre of the room. Whatever Tharaxes was doing, Ronan didn’t want to let the lich finish.
Alyssa was clutching the burned side of her body, and Ronan wanted to rush over and try to help her, but that would doom them all. “Alyssa! You need to help us fight. A level-up is the only thing that can save you,” he shouted over the clattering of bones.
He pulled up his list of skills, trying to think of one that would help him here. He was annoyed that manasynthetic hadn’t helped much against the corrosive lightning, but clearly the steam was only a byproduct, and didn’t count as part of the spell itself.
The best options available to him were dust bomb, or some combination of his offensive skills. As it had been at the beginning of the encounter, his main obstacle remained closing the gap between himself and the floating lich.
Ronan suspected that counter-parry would be effective, but the issue was that Tharaxes seemed to have no interest in a melee confrontation. Why would the lich bother attacking when it could slaughter them from afar with its superior magic?
He saw Alyssa psyching herself up and slowly walking back towards the pond, but she was far from her best condition. Jenna’s spells were working, as Tharaxes cursed and spat every time she blew a particularly large chunk of bone away from the growing abomination.
At the beginning of the battle the lich had been roughly five feet tall—much larger than an ordinary goblin, but still inferior to the gigantic Magriz’al. That was despite being the same species as the towering hobgoblin champion.
Now, the lich was a twelve-foot tall skeleton, with about eight limbs of varying sizes, that ended mostly in hands and feet. One was just a sharp, snapped femur, while another was a thick bone that could be used as a warhammer-esque blunt weapon.
“You little rat! Stop interfering," the lich cursed, before launching three cyan fireballs in Jenna’s direction.
She was able to dodge two of them fairly easily, but the third revealed the lich’s unspoken genius in magic. It had created a pincer attack with the wave of an arm, and the third fireball was about to explode in the woman’s face.
Ronan used a skill that he rarely reached for. A thin, translucent barrier appeared between Jenna’s nose and the fireball the instant before it struck her. Cyan flames washed outwards, but failed to harm a single hair on her head.
He briefly lamented the lost wealth, but a few bronze credits was a worthwhile price to pay to save an ally.
Unfortunately his interference only served to rile up the mini-boss. With a screech of frustration, Tharaxes raised four of its limbs, the appendages starting to crackle and shimmer with the tell-tale glow of the lich’s mana.
Cyan lightning gathered at the ends of the limbs, and three seconds after Ronan had blocked the trio of fireballs, a veritable storm was unleashed. Lightning and fire rained down onto the tiled ground, and dodging was the best the four could manage.
Ronan sought an opening to strike back, or turn the barrage against the boss, but it seemed futile. The lightning and flames didn’t damage him much when they struck, thanks to his prodigious resistances, but the same couldn’t be said for the other three.
Alyssa had already been struggling with the damage from the caustic steam earlier, and that only compounded with the current assault. Her speed allowed her to evade the hottest flames, and the largest bolts of lightning, but the ones that struck her skin rapidly worsened her condition.
Jenna was faring the best, arguably, as she was able to counter the magic barrage with her own spells. Where her spells struck the fireballs and arcs of lightning, explosions decorated the space in the cavern. The odd spell that broke through her defensive manipulations was blocked by a defensive skill that she hadn’t displayed until now.
The thought that his allies were still keeping secrets from him disturbed Ronan, but he supposed he couldn’t blame them. Nothing the three challengers hid from him would even be close to matching the gravity of his own secrets.
Back to the problem at hand, Ronan needed to figure out a way to fight back. He’d asked Jenna and Howard to try and bring the lich down, but that currently seemed impossible.
Even as a mini-boss, Tharaxes shouldn’t have an unlimited mana pool. The current assault had to end sometime soon, and then they could use the opening to attack.
However, the lich’s form continued to grow more imposing as it gathered the final pieces of bone from around the room and attached them to itself. The resulting monstrosity was reminiscent of the zombified fleshbeasts that Ronan had faced in stage 3 of the normal difficulty tutorial, albeit more… skeletal, and definitely a hell of a lot more dangerous.
As predicted, the storm of fire and lightning began to slow six seconds later, and after another four, it subsided. “Start hitting the fucker and try to bring it down,” Ronan yelled, already impatient at his inability to fight.
I really need to work on sorcery again after this. Not having a ranged option is a crippling weakness, he noted to himself. Or perhaps I should finally start using those bows…
Contrary to his expectations, however, Tharaxes didn’t stay floating in the air. Either it had grown tired of attacking from afar, or their earlier insults had truly enraged the mini-boss.
Once its final form was constructed, the skeletal abomination slammed into the now-drained pond, shattering the tiles on impact. As it unfurled to its full size, Ronan realised that the lich, which had previously been just five-feet or so, was now almost twice his height.
The size difference didn’t bother him. In fact, the mini-boss didn’t scare Ronan at all. A sadistic grin teased the corners of his lips upwards. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, and he hadn’t even needed to work to make it happen.
“Why don’t you try this on for size, you precocious brats!” Tharaxes exclaimed with a rattling cackle. The connecting joint of the limb that ended in a sharpened bone suddenly twitched. The next instant, it blasted into the stone besides Alyssa, who’d barely dodged in time.
Her expression was one of vengeful rage, tinged with fear. The damage was getting to her. Frankly, Ronan was surprised the woman had held out this long. Her sheer grit and tenacity were commendable.
Despite the opening attack aimed at Alyssa, most of Tharaxes’ rage seemed focused on Jenna. She’d been the one to insult his stature, and the opening size pun made it abundantly clear the lich was still hung up on her remarks.
With the mini-boss now on the ground, there was nothing left to wait for. Ronan’s initial vital surge had faded, and he activated it again. Stone grip let him ensure the mace would remain steady no matter how hard he hit, and his momentum suddenly raced to zero as he activated charge of the juggernaut.
Unlike the rather mindless skeletal giants, Tharaxes the Goblin Lich was sapient—and exceptionally fast. Charge of the juggernaut allowed Ronan to cross the short distance between himself and the mini-boss in the blink of an eye. Even in that brief moment, the lich cast a spell from one of its many limbs.
His mace smashed against a wall of flame. He had no idea how the lich managed it, but the flames were so fierce that they created a near-physical barrier to his blow. Unfortunately for the mini-boss, it was only a momentary reprieve.
The head of the bonecrusher mace was glowing red as it burst through the flames, smashing against the centre of the giant skeletal construction’s centre of mass. Ronan had no idea if that was where it was most vulnerable, but it would certainly deal the most structural damage to the mini-boss.
Ironically, the flames empowered Ronan’s strike. The physical force of the blow shattered a dozen large bones on impact, and the red-hot iron set the dust aflame. Dust explosions were lethal, and in a split-second moment of genius, Ronan used his own skill of the same name.
He winced as a burst of flame erupted around himself and the boss, searing off the outer layers of his skin instantly. The pain was a worthwhile price to pay, as another dozen bones were burned to ash, and the sturdier, load-bearing bones began to crack.
It was at that moment that the wave of mana from magic strike finished tearing through the lich’s body, and any bones that had held on until that point were eviscerated in an instant. Through the scream of fire, the lich’s cries of pain and rage were drowned out, and all Ronan heard was the beating of his own heart.
If the devastation of his attack ended there, he would have been satisfied. As the pile of broken bones tumbled down around him, and the flames of the explosion faded, all that remained of the lich was the upper torso of its original body. Tharaxes was exposed to the world now that the haggard robes clinging to its skeletal frame had been burned away.
Ronan met its glowing eyes for one last, poignant moment, before the ghostly mace struck its chest, and double strike blasted the remnant skeleton into a thousand shards. The light of life was extinguished in an instant, and the notification that flashed in his face confirmed their victory.
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Edit suggestion: eviscerated in an instant -> shattered in an instant ('eviscerate' doesn't fit the context; it means to disembowel something, rip the guts out, etc. just doesnt work for bones. )
