“You are filth!” the zombified boss roared as its two minions sprinted towards Chilly. Chilly immediately summoned Incinerate and panned the flames over them. He glanced nervously at his life bar and noticed that he only had about ten seconds left on the resistance shrine. In the corner of his eye, he noticed the glass cyclone dissipate.

Fire coursed outwards and engulfed all three undead. The ghouls themselves were only level five and couldn’t survive for long under the combined heat of Incinerate and Starfire Aegis. Before they could get into melee range and rip into him, the intense heat consumed their life pools, and they exploded into waves of purple miasma that were quickly dispersed by the glowing crucifixes of Pious Path.

The boss himself lumbered forwards at barely a walking pace. By the time the two ghouls were eradicated, it had barely made half the distance to Chilly. Chilly eyed the boss skeptically but didn’t bother to question a stroke of good fortune. If the boss was going to walk at him slowly and let him damage it freely, then he was more than willing to oblige.

He canceled Incinerate and dashed away to make some distance. When he reached the edge of Starfire Aegis’s range, he stopped and resumed channeling Incinerate at the boss.

The zombified Priest of Purity roared in frustration as it slowly lumbered after him. Despite its best efforts to catch him, it was unable to do so. Something about the absolutely massive amount of flesh that adorned its frame was reducing its ability to give chase. It did make Chilly feel that the boss had a substantial life pool though.

Fire engulfed the large form and charred the overly muscled flesh. Flakes of blackened skin detached and swirled behind the boss in a cape of embers, propelled by the unnatural wind that Incinerate’s heat produced. Underneath the broiling inferno, Chilly noticed bits of flesh fuse and heal despite the onslaught of two skills. The recovering flesh was few and far between however. Far more common were patches of skin that bubbled vigorously as fluids boiled in the heat. The combined onslaught was more than sufficient to overwhelm the boss’s regeneration.

“Die! Die! Die!” The boss roared as it swiped helplessly at Chilly. Each word was punctuated by a ruthless swipe of its overly muscled arms. They crashed uselessly to the floor as Chilly stopped channeling Incinerate and leapt back out of range.

Just about when the Resistance Shrine’s buff wore off a penguin materialized between Chilly and the boss. It looked angry for some unfathomable reason.

Before he could properly acknowledge the penguin, the boss’s behavior changed. Chilly was expecting something of the sort, but he was still caught off guard with how radical the change was.

“Enough of this!” The zombified Priest of Purity roared, raising both massive fists into the air. Flesh sloughed off the abomination in waves, thinning the boss dramatically. As the flesh hit the floor it combusted, turning into red particles that floated up into the air before getting drawn into the boss.

Its veins bulged with red power as the significantly thinner muscle mass flexed.

Chilly gulped. Despite not getting hit by any attacks up until now, he could tell that whatever the boss was doing was not something he wanted to get caught by. He canceled Incinerate and sprinted past chaos child the penguin to get as far from the boss as he could.

“Run Mr. Child!” Chilly cast behind him not waiting for a response.

Behind him the boss roared. Pounding footsteps reverberated behind him as he leapt a gap in the floor. He was about to land and continue to make distance when-

“Die!-”

Spoiler :

Suddenly Chilly’s world went sidewise as he found himself flying through the air. Mid-flight he felt ribs and internal organs reorganize themselves in his abdominal cavity as his life regeneration furiously worked to keep him alive. His blurry vision allowed him to see a penguin awkwardly chasing after him with Realm Walker raised high in righteous indignation.

He crashed against a pillar and slid down with a blood-soaked squelch.

Slightly used to the rough treatment, Chilly rolled to his feet even before his vision fully stabilized. Despite his alacrity, he only just managed to catch the leaping form of the red veined boss fly at him from an impossible height before he was once again slammed against the pillar.

“-Die!-”

Spoiler :

Starfire Aegis flared brightly in Chilly’s peripheral vision. He barely registered the flash of light, as the boss was entirely aflame from Incinerate, as he bounced off the wall only to fall limply as the Priest raised its other fist up high.

“-Die!” the boss roared as its fist made an intimate connection with Chilly’ temple.

Spoiler :

Starfire Aegis flared under the blow as Chilly dizzily stumbled to his feet, the momentum of hitting the wall somehow bouncing him off of the floor and making it easier to stand up. He blearily looked at the boss and noticed that the red veins were gone, though the extra flesh didn’t seem to have grown back.

Chaos child the penguin caught up and squawked angrily at him. “Call me-”

The penguin was interrupted as the boss stepped on it while lunging at Chilly.

“Die! Die! Die!” The zombie roared, its fists flying once again. Each word was punctuated by the heavy crash of flesh against iron.

Spoiler :

Starfire Aegis flared, whittling the boss’s health down with each successfully landed hit. Despite the heavy blows, Chilly managed to get his shields up to block the second, and both shields up to block the third blow. Using his shields didn’t actually reduce the amount of damage he took, but it certainly helped maintain his orientation as his head wasn’t spinning around like a bobble head from each attack.

Chaos child popped out from underneath the bosses foot looking even angrier than the boss had been.

“Call me chaos, not child!” It shouted as it stormed towards Chilly.

“Got it!” Chilly cast a cursory glance at the penguin, as he backed away from the boss on instinct. Belatedly he realized that the boss's last attacks hadn’t dealt all that much damage. Well they had, just not more than his regeneration could handle. He started channeling Incinerate as he tried to muster his high order reasoning skills.

It seemed that the boss had enraged, losing flesh and gaining massive amounts of speed and damage for a short duration. That was a typical boss mechanic and he should have expected something of the sort. Truly it was a massive speed and damage boost, far higher than any other mob had displayed up until that point in the dungeon.

The boost must have come at a cost. Already Chilly could see that the boss was smaller than it was before. All the flesh that had been sacrificed for the damage boost was gone, hopefully for good. Enraging it might be a viable method of getting through the monster’s absurd lifepool.

Except. It really wasn’t. It was way too dangerous to allow the boss to enrage again. If he hadn’t gotten lucky the massive blows might have knocked him over the edge and into the black abyss beyond. Chilly had no illusions that he could survive a fall like that, regardless of the amount of life regeneration his skills granted him. That wasn’t even mentioning the absurd damage. If he took three blows in quick succession there was a chance that he would be saying nighty night for good.

That was decided then, he couldn’t let the boss enrage again, regardless of how much damage it was doing to itself.

Chilly canceled Incinerate and dashed back again before aiming the ray of fire at the boss once more. Once again the boss roared in frustration as he lumbered after him fruitlessly.

The boss became enraged when it got frustrated!

The realization made goosebumps erupt over Chilly’s skin. His running away is what was making the boss frustrated.

Without thinking too hard about it, Chilly canceled Incinerate and rushed into melee range with the boss. It grinned horrifically as it raised both fists high into the air.

“Die! Die! Die!” It roared triumphantly as its fists slammed into Chilly’s upraised shields. Of course, Chilly didn’t hesitate to blast the boss with a little bit of fire as he took the blows. Every bit of efficiency counted.

Spoiler :

Chilly withstood the power of the mighty blows relatively easily. It hurt, and would take several good seconds to recover from, but he would survive. In addition, Chilly’s cape flared as it burned the boss’s fists each time a blow landed. Despite the bright discharge, it didn’t seem to bother the boss much, or leave much lasting damage at all.

Chilly ducked back and stepped out of range of the boss. He carefully watched the boss’s movements as he once more bathed it in fire. A second after taking the blows, his regeneration refilled his life pool and Starfire Aegis summoned a dozen streamers of plasma to burn the boss further.

Chilly continued to burn the undead down as it got closer. When it got into range he brutally squashed the instinct to run and raised his shields defensively.

“Impure filth!” The boss roared. Chilly blinked, and only barely managed to move his shields in time to deflect a massive two handed blow.

>

Spoiler :

Chilly felt something in his knees give out as the force of the blow knocked him to the ground. He instantly began crab walking backwards from the boss. A second later his regeneration fixed whatever damage had been done to his leg and he rolled to his feet and dashed away.

Beside him a penguin shook its head sadly.

“Stultus non potest doceri” It said sadly, as it looked at Chilly’s destroyed knees.

“Still have no idea!” Chilly screamed, as he backed away.

Chilly panted as he made sure not to make it too far away, before he turned and channeled Incinerate once more. Fire and plasma roared towards the boss further decreasing its effective life pool with every second under the burning onslaught. By this point, the boss was looking bloodied. The large loss of flesh from when it enraged combined with the bits of damage Chilly managed to sneak in were finally catching up with its marginal regeneration.

A penguin manifested beside him.

“Thanks for the chapter!”

Chilly grunted, not entirely paying all that much attention. He was carefully making sure that the boss didn’t pull any other tricks out of its proverbial hat.

“Life is a resource until it hits zero!” the penguin continued jovially as it tapped its temple with Realm Walker knowingly.

“Brilliant advice,” Chilly grunted out. The boss had reached him, and Chilly stubbornly raised his shields high. Getting vulnerable was infinitely preferable to provoking the boss. “How ‘bout you play the punching bag and see how long you maintain that opinion.”

“Die! Die! Die!” The Priest of Purity roared and slammed down with its fists. Starfire Aegis flared, adding just a bit more damage to the pool.

Spoiler :

Chilly managed to deflect two of the three blows and was only pushed back instead of getting absolutely flattened. It irked him that he still took full damage regardless of how well the blow was deflected, but he would dwell on that later.

He quickly stepped further away, being mindful not to box himself in against one of the walls. Chilly channeled for around the five seconds it took for the boss to catch up.

“Impure filth!”

Chilly hastily jumped back as he recognized the alternate voiceline that signified that larger vulnerability inflicting slam. As he rolled to his feet, the boss roared in frustration. Fearful of another enraging incident, Chilly dashed back into melee range to let the boss hit him.

“Die! Die! Die!”

Spoiler :

Starfire Aegis flared, as Chilly retreated and channeled Incinerate again. By this point the boss was looking well done. Black smoke rose from its charred flesh, and black embers broke off its chest and back to dance cheerily in Incinerate’s backlash.

Suddenly the boss paused. Worried that it would enrage, Chilly raced into melee range, but the boss ignored him. It raised both burnt limbs high into the air as if riling up a crowd then roared into the empty cathedral.

“Filth challenges us!”

Chilly frantically scanned the arena as fire flowed out of his hand and engulfed the boss. After a whole second of looking he finally spotted a Putrid Ghoul climbing out of one of the pits. It was a strange ghoul. For one, It was wearing a stained white robe, where all the other ghouls in the dungeon so far had been naked or wearing withered rags. The other was that it was carrying an open topped bowl with iridescent red liquid sloshing within. A brief glance around revealed that there were two other ghouls in various corners of the room, in a similar getup.

The moment the ghouls crested the sides of the pit, they began to run towards the boss. The Priest of Purity didn’t react, simply remaining in its standing pose with its eyes closed and its head leaned back.

Chilly frowned. Whatever was happening it couldn’t be good.

He could either continue to dps the boss, or run out and kill the ghouls. Chilly chose the ghouls.

He sprinted away from the boss and unleashed Incinerate on the closest ghoul. Incinerate ignited its robe as Starfire Aegis enhanced the damage. Barely a second later, it collapsed into a pile of smoldering ashes as a wave of desecrated ground burst from its corpse.

Chilly didn’t spare the dead ghoul a glance as he sprinted towards the next ghoul. That one too died after a second, which allowed Chilly to catch the third ghoul before it reached the boss. Whatever they were going to do with the red liquid Chilly didn’t want to know.

When all the ghouls had died, the boss slowly awakened. It opened its hate filled eyes and stared around incredulously, as if it couldn’t believe that its followers hadn’t reached it. It roared in impotent rage, but thankfully didn’t enrage.

Chilly stepped into melee range and tanked its three crushing attacks in order to mollify it. He then stepped back and continued to burn the boss down.

It took three more complete cycles of getting hit and channeling Incinerate before the boss collapsed to its knees. When this happened Chilly took several hasty steps out of range and watched in case of some kind of random explosion.

The Priest of Purity grabbed its skull with bony claws and began ripping into the charred flesh. Its back arched, then roared in pure misery. Huge chunks of muscle that was more ash than flesh fell off the boss and scattered across the stone floor. More and more meat fell off, until Chilly could clearly see the skeleton underneath.

The bones were deeply damaged, from the first phase of the boss fight. Cracks spiderwebbed across them, with some fragments entirely missing. As Chilly watched, an inner glow began to emanate from with the visible cracks. Intensifying as the rest of the flesh sloughed off the skeleton.

“No!” the Priest roared, its boney hands grasping its breaking skull in a vain attempt to keep it together. It rose to its feet and began to flail helplessly. Chilly couldn’t help but feel a tad bit of remorse for the clearly distraught creature.

“Argh!” It screamed, its voice full of agony. The cracks suddenly spread with harsh popping sounds, as large chunks of the skeleton began to clatter to the floor.

Abruptly, the mad flagellation of the Priest of Purity froze. Its inner light pulsed once, then twice. Then with an almighty boom fragments of bone went flying in all directions.

Chilly casually raised both shields to protect his eyes, and smiled at his victory. That had been a tough fight. Not only because the boss had so much life that it took ages to...wait a second.

Chilly frowned at his interface as he noticed that he hadn’t gotten experience for the fight.

A ghostly voice sounded from the center of the skeleton’s explosion.

“I...am...HOLY!”

A ghost of a man wreathed in waving robes burst out of the ground and flew high up into the air.

“You have got to be shitting me.” Chilly groaned, as he raised his shields once more.

A penguin materialized beside Chilly and grinned up at the ghost. It seemed both smug and congratulatory. For some reason it was holding a wooden flower in its flipper instead of the traditional wooden sword.

“To survive is to confront obstacles. To truly live is to overcome them.”

“Well,” Chilly muttered, watching the ghost with narrowed eyes. “Haven’t overcome this one just yet.”

Mossr the penguin simply smiled, and raised its flower high before letting it drop and vanishing in a puff of smoke.

Behind the vaguely penguin-shaped cloud of black smoke, the ghost writhed violently in the air. Unlike the skeleton or the ghoul versions, the ghost didn’t seem to be stabilizing after it initial creation. As it rose higher into the air, instead of growing more corporeal, or gaining opacity, instead, it began shedding waves of glowing sparks. The chaotic tide of energetic particles spewed out of the ghost, fading rapidly, like a birthday sparkler.

Suddenly the ghost screamed.

Chilly covered his ears and winced. Slowly backing away just in case something truly horrendous was about to happen. Instead, the ghost popped out of existence with a rather anticlimactic rush of lost air.

You have slain a level 7 Priest of Purity!

You have gained 1 experience!

From the sky several objects fell to the ground. Chilly watched as a pair of silver pants and two smaller objects that caught the light landed on the floor. Luckily they hadn’t fallen into any of the pits in the floor, which would have been rage inducing.

Chilly waited and watched the arena for a good few minutes, as he relaxed from the adrenaline high. It turned out to be unnecessary since no other foes emerged from the pits or elsewhere. Still Chilly affirmed his paranoia. It had served him well up until this point so there was no reason to change.

Eventually, he recovered and relaxed enough to go over to the boss’s drops.

Unknown Essence

Take this to a crafting bench to learn of its properties!

Unknown Essence

Take this to a crafting bench to learn of its properties!

The two essences were both unknown, though Chilly could identify them the old fashioned way. The first looked like a diamond. Just a clear rock with facets on it that would probably be well appreciated by the ladies. Chilly himself and never really understood the appeal, but whatever.

The other essence looked the same, but was tinted red. Clearly these were both rare essences of some kind, but he would need to head over to the crafting bench in order to figure out what they do.

The last item was deeply intriguing for an entirely different reason. It probably wouldn’t be immediately useful, but it did provide some very interesting possibilities.

Silver Strides

Normal

Pants

iLevel: 7

23% increased movement speed

Can roll movement speed modifiers