Chapter Thirty-Six—Dungeon Boss

Nearly Six Months Ago

The ground shook as Shiro, Mirrikh, Javed, Mazi and Baibar stood in a semi-circle, waiting for the guardian of the ninth floor to arrive.

It wasn’t long before the ground in front of them began to crack, to split open as the dungeon boss arrived to confront them—to stop them from advancing any further.

“Quite the entrance,” Mazi said.

“Get ready!” Shiro called. “Do not give this boss any ground—any room to breathe. We attack!”

The other men in his company nodded, their weapons held high in defensive stances.

“Does the ninth floor boss usually come out of the ground?” Baibar asked.

“Uh,” Mirrikh said dumbly. “Avalani, maybe?” The uncertainty in his tone was obvious.

Do we not know what boss this is? Shiro wondered. Then he said the words aloud. “What boss comes out of the ground?”

No one gave an answer to his question.

“We looked at the known bosses,” Mazi said, glancing toward Shiro. “Avalani, Salamandrid, Tirawani, Nine Claws and Oromoch!”

“None of them come out of the ground like this!” Shiro said.

He glanced toward the arena doors as the crack of light from the chamber beyond was shut out when they thundered closed.

“Well,” Javed said, “that was our only way out. We defeat this thing or…”

“Or he defeats us,” Shiro added. “Give no ground!”

And then the cracks in the floor split open, revealing a bulbous growth that rose through and above the ground.

“What the…?”

“We’ve never seen this before!”

“This is not good. What is that thing? This is an irregular, isn’t it?”

“Stay calm,” Shiro said. “We do not know this floor boss. But we can defeat it.”

“It’s not even moving,” Javed said.

“Then let’s attack it!” Mazi spat, running and jumping with a battle cry. Like with the crystals, he flipped in the air and slammed his hammer into the bulbous growth, but nothing shattered. The force of his attack was mostly absorbed with a wet and squishy noise.

The surface of the monster was thick and spongy.

“We may need to cut through,” Shiro said. “Edge weapons!”

And then the bulb, large and heavy on the bottom, tapering near the top, split open with a wet sickly sound, the purple leaves spreading out to reveal a tangle of—

Are they tentacles?

They separated and began to writhe violently, sweeping about, searching for something to attack. The creature being a monster, and a floor boss, that searching pattern could be nothing else.

The ends of the tentacles had little sprouts with berry-like growths.

“Agh!” Mazi cried and then he was flipped onto his back, his leg angled upward as one of the tentacle growths constricted his ankles.

He writhed.

“Cut him down!” Shiro called.

They charged in. Mirrikh was batted aside and went flying. Javed swiped at the boss, but a tentacle grabbed his arm.

Shiro moved in and cut the arm with his katana and purple liquid shot forth, a muffled whaling cry coming from under the ground—from under the creature.

It shot a bolt of fear through Shiro’s stomach. Whatever they were seeing was only part of this unknown boss.

Mazi screamed as the tentacle around his ankle lifted him into the air, his body swinging about as Shiro and the others shouted, attacked the creature, tried to slash its tentacles.

And then the tentacle holding the large-shouldered Mazi sucked in on itself and took Mazi into the thicket, the leaves closing quickly.

“What…?” Mirrikh shouted, coming up short. “It ate him?”

“Open it up!” Javad screamed. “Attack it!”

Shiro slashed the closed up leaf with his katana, putting a gash there where purple liquid oozed, but the damage he had just done was nothing more than a scratch as the orb pulsed and undulated.

Then it shot open, the leaf in front of Shiro slapping him into the dirt, a haze of green gasses pluming out of the boss.

“Mazi!” Baibar called. “Mazi, are you there!”

“Can you hear us?” Mirrikh called, grabbing Shiro by the arms and hauling him back away from the plant-based boss.

And then something exploded, shot out from between the guardian’s tentacles, arced in the air and landed behind the group of adventurers.

It was Mazi, still wearing his armor, but his skin was gone, his muscles a melted mass of digested flesh and a ghostly grin of meat an eyeless sockets staring up at them.

Shiro flinched, took a step back and whirled.

“What is this beast?”

There’s no way we can defeat this monster…

And then all the tentacles shot out, a writhing mass of arms and tongues, searching for another adventurer to drag into its pulsating bulbous mass.