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1014 Words
The bar of condensed energy was again golden instead of blue, and despite Matt not maxing out the skill, it still punched through the magical shields of the octopodes.
The bodies of the controlling monsters fell one by one, and in less than two seconds, the reanimated guards fell back down. Not dead but stunned from their controllers’ deaths.
It only cost a dozen kills to cast the spell.
Seeing Liz and Aster finishing off the guards that stumbled while trying to get back to their feet, Matt raced forward and assisted her in her own fight. How they managed to stay alive after dying, being reanimated, and then having that reanimating force end he had no idea. But they were nothing more than wheat for the harvesting for the two mages.
Aster cast a buffing skill that filled Matt with power, and he rushed forward.
The Fishman with the octopus crown was a full boss and had the strength to match.
It also had much more strength than Matt would have expected from a humanoid-shaped creature.
The Fishman leader swung its trident in heavy arcs that had little in the way of melee abilities but made up for that lack with speed and spells.
The octopus on the boss’s head wasn’t idle, and it cast spells with two of its tentacles, unlike its larger brethren. [Water Dart]s came from its left tentacle, while well-timed [Water Bubble]s were cast with its right.
When combined with the boss’s speed and strength, Susanne had a hard time landing more than a glancing blow on her own.
Matt landed and immediately threw himself at the boss but had to retreat as it tried to hit him with a back swing from the butt of their trident.
Settling into a holding pattern, Matt waited for Liz and Aster to finish the guards off so they could all focus on this single monster.
Before he or Susanne could land a good hit themselves, the octopus raised itself up on the leader’s head and pointed its tentacles out toward its fallen brethren’s’ corpses. As if it was a vacuum, it started to absorb the octopodes’ bodies, reinforcing itself and growing larger.
When its main body was a foot tall, its skin had changed from a purple to a dark blue, and energy pulsed from it.
With the increase in power, the Fishman leader grew from a normal human size to ten feet tall.
Their gear and weapon improved, and with this contest promising to be a massive battle, Liz and Aster joined the fray with a crash.
Liz, in her golem form and having cast [Blood Crystal Armor], was an equal-sized opponent, and matched the boss’s trident with a fist of frozen-over blood.
With [Blood Crystal Armor] reinforcing her, she took the hit and returned it with a jab at the boss’s side that sent it stumbling back while spitting up blood.
Matt and Susanne moved at the same time and split apart as they moved to flank the boss.
Susanne sliced at the octopus on the boss’s head, forcing it to cast [Water Bubble] to block her [Wind Cutter], while Matt sent out his own [Mana s***h] a second later. As her attack landed and destabilized the defensive spell, his own slammed right through it, causing a spray of blood to arc into the air.
That blow in and of itself wasn’t fatal, but it gave Liz and Aster the chance they needed.
The spray of blood condensed into a solid mass, and flash froze before reversing direction and piercing the octopus and boss’s head, all while Liz held the tentacles at bay with tendrils of blood.
Matt was shocked at the single burst of Genesis Energy but knew that it meant one of the two hadn’t died yet.
As the boss started to shrink, it got free from Liz’s grasp and tried to rush Matt, but he was ready and met its charge with his blade.
The boss fell to the ground with a gushing wound and tried to bite his leg in one last desperate attempt to take one of them with it.
A bloody boot to the face ended the boss’s life, as the second burst of Genesis Energy confirmed the kill.
Cursing, Matt inspected his foot to finally get a look at the injury he had taken while getting out of the first octopodes encirclement.
His boot had been pierced, and he was now missing the second and third smallest toes on his left foot.
Cursing, he withdrew a healing potion but hesitated to dump it on the wound. There was a chance to find his missing digits and reattach them.
“Can someone find my toes?” He called out as he started to hobble over where he thought they would have landed.
The fight had moved a lot, and the reanimated guards didn’t help things with their movements.
Aster scampered over ahead of Liz and sniffed at his foot before sniffing around.
She eventually stopped and circled a spot on the floor. Any empty spot.
His bond looked from him to the floor before whining. “I think Minkalla ate your toes. The smell lands here but doesn’t go any further.”
Matt felt his stomach tighten before cursing as he dumped the healing potion over his wounded foot.
He had pushed through the pain during the fight, but it hurt, and he didn’t have access to his normal healing methods.
Not that any of them would be able to regrow a lost appendage. [Lesser Regeneration] was good, but not as strong as [Regeneration] proper.
Liz arrived and quickly pulled off his boot to inspect the wound. “We need to clean this out, but they’re unimportant toes, at least.”
Matt grumbled as he popped a painkiller and handed her the canteen of water. “I was very attached to those digits. Had them my whole life.”
“Oh that’s not even true,” Liz said while swatting at his arm. “You regrew that foot not twenty years ago.”
- Writer
