Once Mash got into the earshot of Jill, he yelled trying to get her attention. Though it didn’t work as she teleported further away. Annoyed at his inability to get her attention, he aimed a harmless attack at her. Her forewarning rings should let her see the attack long in advance, and hopefully get her to react. It was a simple attack where Priscilla had him form a narrow twig, that was dulled at the ends. It didn’t even trigger her items it seemed as the twig bounced against her back. It did manage to get her attention and she teleported beside him, obviously angry that he stopped her easy fight.

“Get the warden, otherwise we're going to have to deal with it while exhausted.”

He didn’t actually know if that was true or not but felt like this fight was accomplishing nothing. The creature’s unnatural laughter only confirmed that fact for him. It didn’t look weak though, whereas these monsters seemed stupid.

“Take Red and Luke too, prioritize finishing the boss.:

Mash’s voice echoed beneath his mask and armor, even with him opening the mask to let his words pass. It was ignorable though, and Mash got the words across. Jill looked like she was going to argue but thought better of it and nodded. Mash could handle a horde of mindless monsters. If anything it was his specialty. Jill knew that and so did the others. The final fight would not be his fight, and he was sure that would annoy the creature. It seemed to dislike how Mash could find the creature and clearly singled him out. So, his best plan and the cruelest plan was to pass it to the others. He would not give the creature what it wanted.

Mash heard the laughter cut off and knew that Jill had probably gone to engage the enemy. Mash did something else and headed back towards the center. The monstrous imitations of typical classes rushed towards him, but none of them moved particularly fast, and he was able to make his preparations.

Mash was in his full armor, and grew blades out from the elbows, and formed his weapon to be particularly long. Furthermore, he gave himself two additional arms, each of which didn’t have a hand and instead had a Dragonoid maw meant to devour his opponents. This was only the beginning and, he started following Priscilla’s instructions for forming tails behind him. He didn’t need as many as with the ants since these things wouldn’t burn his wood like the ants. Each of those was a copy of Priscilla, as it was the easiest shape for her to direct.

Mash had learned a lot since the fight with ants, the first of which was how much effort Priscilla actually put in for each fight. Apparently making the outline was several times harder than just casting the spell, and he struggled a lot when doing the same. It had taken him a few minutes to form a single outline, and he truly got a grasp at how great her mana control really was. That was not even to mention that it would only improve as her new bodies formed, the next of which should be completed before his tournament fight. The information had actually made him excited, knowing that none at his rank would be able to keep up with Priscilla.

So he followed the outlines more gratefully now and watched as the imitations of Priscilla devasted the battlefield around him. They sought out the mages, tearing them apart as they got close. The things fired spells at Mash but their accuracy wasn’t very good. It was not to say he got out easily, a spear of ice having slammed into him while he was distracted by a melee fighter. The fighter was quite annoying, as he used a bow at point-blank range. It didn’t even use it as a club, but as a spear, and threw arrows at him with the other hand. It was extremely annoying, and several arrows had managed to puncture his armor. This thing's strength was otherworldly.

Mash didn’t understand why it was so physically powerful, as it was clear that its inhuman head belonged on a squirrel. It was not a very intimidating sight, but every missed arrow created a boom where it landed, and each stab of the spear shook the air. It was faster and more capable than the other creatures, but still not fast enough to land any hits, and his rising stats would eventually give him an advantage. That was until the spear of ice hit his foot and stopped his movements. He was glad that persist wasn’t active, but it still made him vulnerable to the thrust of the thing. The other melee fighters had been distracted with the dragon-like maws, but the spearmen landing a hit caused him to stumble into the range of the other fighters. Well, he didn’t really stumble so much as flying through the air.

The force was incredible for two reasons. The first was that his armor didn’t really get pierced as much as it got dented in by the force of the blow. And crushed his ribs beneath. Thankfully though the wound was actually fairly minor other than broken bones, and the pain was something he could manage. Several tools he had helped him deal with pain, and a few broken bones weren’t that bad. It was much better than the twisting from earlier. These thoughts passed through his mind in less than a second, before he slammed into another monster. Spikes grew from the back of his armor in between the gaps formed by the tails, and they stabbed into the creature, using the force of the throw to his advantage.

The thing he collided with died instantly, but two others lashed out at him. One was fast, but the other was just incompetent. The speedy one landed a hit with a dagger, actually having a weapon appropriate for its style made its strike more effective. The blade slipped into his armor but didn’t cut him anywhere vital. None of the creatures were very smart, and just attacked wherever they could, so the dagger actually hit his arm, and got stuck in his armor. He didn’t bother taking it out for now and continued the fight smoothly.

He flung off from the creature and released the spikes on his back as he dashed towards the slower creature. The faster one had a narrow face of a canine, though he didn’t recognize it. It dashed at his back mindlessly when he turned away from it, but he expected the obvious attack. The creatures had some level of intelligence, but none were smarter than a silly beast. As it got close, One of the dragon maws formed from the back of his armor and launched at the thing. The crunching of its head could be heard as he cut the incompetent monster’s head clean off. The squirrel-like one had closed the distance at this point, but Mash was prepared to fight it. Or rather, Priscilla was, as one of her replicas slammed into the thing’s side.

Mash instead dashed toward the group of mages in front of him. He dodged another spear of ice and saw that it was made by something with a wolf’s head. Mash dashed toward the group, and sped up drastically, as his persist skill finally triggered. He felt like it was early, and glanced behind him with the added stats. The glance had told him why his energy drained so quickly. Each replica of Priscilla was enormous, several times larger than she had been when she was a boss. She was fully taking advantage of the fact that this would be the final fight and ignored all concerns about the recoil from the skill.

His bonus stats let him see more clearly, and Mash caught a glimpse of one of the replicas crushing an entire group of mages. He leveled from the attack, but that wasn’t all that surprising to him. His improved stats had made the remainder of this group easy, and he cut through the mages as he dodged their blows. Compared to their sluggish motions, he was essentially untouchable and plowed through the abominations. The fight wasn’t over though as the floor lit up again, even though there were still a few of the abominations left over from the previous fight. This time only three monsters appeared and he felt like this was the final group of creatures. This was the worst thing so far as well, and he threw up when he saw it.

Since he was stuck in motion, his vomit would have spewed out from the opening he made within his mask. However, there was no food in him and he was merely wretched. The creatures were hideous, and the smell filled the room quickly. They were masses of flesh, random parts connecting to form enormous blobs of moving limbs. When one of his creations slammed into the nearest one, the floor shook, but it didn’t die. Instead, it caught the wooden creation, and hundreds of hands and mouths started tearing up the wood. Mash wasn’t all that worried and ran towards that same one. He couldn’t do much himself but figured he could start carving into it.

“Run!” Priscilla gave him the warning, though he didn’t need it as he saw the creature launch a miniature assortment of limbs at one of the remaining mages. As soon as they landed they tore the thing apart in a few seconds, the strength of the attack was obviously ridiculous. Running away, he let Priscilla handle the attacking. He could tell what she was doing and knew that she had given up on attacking the remaining mages and moved all of the creations to attack the larger creature. There were three, but she focused on one at a time. It didn’t seem to matter though, as it merely took the attacks. Though, he finally heard a different noise than fingers crawling against the ground and turned around to see the thing disperse.

He let the rush of a level up, but also realized the limbs that were pouring across the ground had not stopped moving. One arm had managed to touch him, and he started feeling the twisting sensation again. It started on his armor and ended there, as he dislodged the entire leg section, and jumped away. This was going to be a problem and he knew it. Already a quarter of the ground was covered in these limbs, and there were still another two creatures remaining. He needed more indiscriminate damage and realized what he needed to do.

“Lightning storm!”

Priscilla’s glee was palpable, and she stopped controlling three of the replicas to focus on the lightning. The replicas simply broken off, and were left scattered on the ground, as only one was still moving now she slammed it into one of the creatures. On the other hand. Mash had already started forming lightning wildly around him, and she slowly increased the range and power with her outlines. Within a few seconds, Mash was dancing in a mindless swirl of lightning that bounced between the limbs on the ground. He was performing a simple training exercise, but the lightning was killing the moving limbs on the ground as he moved among them. The range of his storm kept rising too. It was a powerful attack at dealing small amounts of damage in repetition but was very useful for this situation. The storm of lightning kept growing until it encompassed the entire room, and he let it as his friends were not nearby. The lightning hit everything in the room, and eventually, even the larger creatures died.

He leveled again when the final creature died, but he didn’t stop moving. He did stop the lightning storm though and made his way towards the glass wall from earlier. Mash was a bit surprised to see that the fight wasn’t over, and slammed the remaining replica of Priscilla into the glass trying to get the warden behind it. It did manage to break through the glass, but the boss caught the replica, and the whole thing twisted violently as it collapsed. When that happened Mash realized why the boss had been such a problem. Luke was the only one that could get close safely, and a single touch of the large boss would be deadly to anyone else.

That did not mean the boss was uninjured though, and Mash could see that several of its eyes were bloody messes, and it had a section of its side missing. The glass was broken and the creature dashed out into the arena, the limbs, and pieces of flesh being absorbed into the thing's body. As the monster grew larger, Jill’s yell echoed in the room.

“God dammit Mash!”