Wolf

Two-and-a-half days later, on the sixtieth floor

Okay, this room reminds me a little bit of the setup of the labyrinth themed boss rooms.

I look around the small room for a few seconds, taking in the strange sci-fi feel of the room before focusing on the strange door at the other end of it. Similar to the boss and mini boss rooms of the first theme, this one has a little gap going through it – except this time in the form of the separator between the different halves of the door – making the other side of the door visible. In the middle of the gap is a large button with a crescent moon at the center of it.

When I walk up to the door, I lean down a little and begin peeking through the gap into the boss room itself.

“That’s a big eyeball,” I mutter as the very first thing that catches my eye in the room is the giant floating eyeball. The thing has some technology on it, but it seems to be mostly biological despite the theme of the floor. It has some sort of metal plating surrounding it everywhere except around the pupil and the iris around it, with a red beam of light going wherever the thing is looking. Meanwhile its iris is actually blue in color, with a black and red pupil.

_-| Eigais – Beholder – Level 678 |-_

A beholder? Does it shoot lasers from its eyes? Because that’s what most monsters with the form of an eyeball usually do in video games.

That aside, I turn my attention to the rest of the room. It has the appearance of some sort of sci-fi laboratory, with several large, round, sealed off tubes, each with some sort of blob of flesh inside. What’s more is that there are also random items thrown about the room, including various weapons and tools.

Is this some sort of mad scientist’s workshop? And if that’s the case, then where’s the mad scientist?

Although, it’s always possible that the beholder killed the scientist. In fact, I’m even willing to consider that the beholder could have been the scientist after a bad experiment.

Either way, I take my focus away from the room before searching up beholders on the System Forums.

I should use this opportunity to get as much intel as I can on the boss.

After spending a decent chunk of time researching the monster, I close out of the System Forums and turn back towards the door.

Based off of what I could find, it was probably the former of the two theories I thought of earlier. The beholder was probably some sort of experiment and killed off the mad scientist.

As for the monster’s powers? It looks like they are – to put it simply – able to fire a laser from their eye. Although in more complicated terms, they’re able to gather the plasma in their body, along with the circuitry of the technology mixed in with their body – because they are apparently cyborgs of a sort – and fire it through a small barrel-shaped cannon in the center of their pupil.

Fortunately for me, they’re only able to do this once.

Because that would be bad if I had to deal with constant beams of plasma. As I have learned through a rather embarrassing moment a couple of floors ago – after the monsters finally began catching up with my level again – plasma is considered a fire-based attack. Why that is, I don’t know, but it is. And it sucks.

I glance at the corner of my interface at that thought.

My Info:

Level: 652

EXP: 54832/65200

System Points: 16.20

Viewing Room Profits: 19513

At least the boss isn’t able to break my ice without its plasma. Also, I have something to look forward to on the next theme. I’m still on cooldown right now from buying anything, but I should be able to splurge on something nice in about a day on the Player Auction.

That aside, I turn my attention back to the beholder through the gap in the door. The creature has a strange ability to manipulate the technology surrounding it, but aside from that, the creature isn’t all that strong physically. I could probably rip it apart with relative ease if I reached it.

Which likely means that it will have some minions helping it fight.

My gaze turns to the tubes.

Maybe those things?

A thought comes to mind before I begin manipulating my ice element to pass through the gap in the door, only for it to be blocked by the same strange energy – one of which I can now recognize as being an element, albeit one that I have absolutely no idea what is, and neither does the forums.

Hmm, I guess the forums were right about this being the element only usable by the System. Which makes me wonder if it’s also the element used by The Reaper, since he made the System.

Anyways, my plan to cheat the System in this fight now a failure, I reach out and press the button, causing the door to release a bit of steam before opening. At the same time, the beholder’s gaze immediately locks onto me.

A few seconds pass in silence before a purple aura begins to radiate off of the thing, followed by all of the technological equipment and weapons within the room suddenly raising into the air with the same purple aura.

I – having already expected this to happen – immediately expel all of my ice element to flood the room in a large wave of icy mist, enveloping each and every piece of equipment and weapon. However, before my ice element can reach the tubes, they all explode, releasing all of the malformed creatures within.

Just as I’m about to frown at this, my ice element sweeps over them all, freezing each of them solid before they can do anything.

Oh. Okay then.

I turn my attention back to the beholder, a grin beginning to form on my face, only to instead mutter, “Oh shit,” as I see a bright red and purple light beginning to shine out of the center of its eye. After that, I jump for cover behind one of the counters whilst a loud sizzling sound echoes throughout the room and I feel most of my ice element that was previously filling it completely vaporizing. Meanwhile, the heat within the room continues to rise.

Okay, this plasma beam is stronger than I had-

My thoughts are interrupted as the counter behind me splits and a beam of plasma directly cuts into my arm before going straight through and severing it completely as I shout in pain.

However, not letting myself get overwhelmed by the pain, I ignore the brief notification that appears in my vision as I almost instinctively activate my Physical Boost skill, tripling my physical capabilities to jump out of the way, leaving the remainder of the plasma beam to fizzle out against the wall.

After that, I feel an incredible desire to let it all out, shifting straight into my hunter form and roaring into the confines of the room before leaping straight towards the beholder with the massive boost in my physical capabilities and swatting it like a fly. The creature flies straight into the ground before making a loud noise that is a mixture of flesh being smushed and metal being bent as the creature becomes a grotesque mess on the floor.

I then fall the rest of the way to the ground whilst heaving out heavy breaths in my pain.

Suddenly, almost as if driven by instinct, I begin sprinting over to my fallen arm before grabbing it and sticking it back to my body where it was cut off. After that, the ice element within my body connects to the ice element still circulating within my arm, and the flesh of my arm begins to reconnect to my body, allowing the pain to finally fade away as if it were only a nightmare.

I fall onto my back on the floor whilst panting in exhaustion, with almost all of my remaining stamina having been used up to do… whatever the hell I just did to reconnect my arm.

After staring up at the ceiling for a few minutes – and feeling the effects of my Physical Boost skill ending – I open up my inventory to grab a Tier 6 stamina potion before downing and raising my arm in front of my face to look at it.

“What just happened…” I mutter as I turn my arm back and forth, trying to find any slight difference in it that wasn’t there prior to it being severed. Aside from the quickly regenerating armor, and the severed sleeve of the coat that I’ll need to repair in a bit.

Once I determine that there aren’t any noticeable differences, I begin to get back up to my feet before turning towards the exit that I can see behind one of the enormous tubes that was destroyed during the fight. After that, I turn my attention towards the boss chest that spawned next to the boss’s ruined corpse.

Yeah, I have a lot of questions about the events of this battle…

But at least it turned out well in the end. Pain aside.

Actually, speaking of pain…

I glance at the notifications on the edge of my interface before smiling a little as I start walking over to the boss chest.

Some levels in my pain resistance. That’s always a plus.

Even if the pain that’s required to get those levels isn’t a plus.

Anyways, I touch the boss chest without even bothering to examine its appearance before looking at the description that appears above it and raising my eyebrows in pleasant surprise.

Okay, so maybe this battle had another plus after all.