Chapter 39: Boss fight

Excerpt from the book “Dungeons and Diving” By the veteran diver Duncan

Dungeons… a terrifying conversation to have with those damned philosophers. It's definitely something I advise you don’t study, to this day I have found records of 3 great people who were driven to madness trying to figure out the odd origins of them.

I am of course talking about the ‘naturally generated’ dungeons. For now, artificial ones are exempt until later on. These seemingly random structures vary in quality and quantity. But all have some kind of pull that has killed many a young adventurer. How they appear is unknown, yet are earliest records talk of seemingly instantly appearing structures. Artificial in appearance yet no clear origin. Whether you believe ancient progenitors left them or they are created from nature, that doesn’t matter.

In this book, I will teach how to safely observe, assess, and dive these dungeons. Or at least all I have found in my many adventures.

I take my time to slowly appreciate this world. Unmolested by monsters it's just beautiful. This dimension just screams magic; Flying from tree to tree I can truly appreciate the vast beautiful array of trees. With telepads safely in place, I can explore freely.

It's not long before I find a robust oak. It sounds rather boring but is in fact a positively gigantic tree with a hollow core. Dungeons spawn within the leafy canopy of this tree. Flying towards the tree I feel smaller and smaller; dwarfed by its magnitude. “It looked smaller in the game” is all I can say on the matter.

Immediately, I fly to the top of the tree. I am looking for notably round groupings of leaves and sounds of skittering. I was in look; this tree had a rather small canopy but I could see a distinct spear of leaves on the far side of the tree.

Breaking it open I find a wooden core. Within a chest and spawner, excellent. I immediately break the spawner, sadly some swarmer spiders spawn before I break it. In the second of breaking, I admire the curious nature of this odd block. A weird wisp of energy pulsates within.

With it broken I address the spiders; by quickly killing them. They are very stupid and just run into my sword. Although I did get a nasty scare as I missed one and it jumped onto my face. Protected by Armor or not, it scared the life out of me.

Having eliminated the threat I collect what remains of the broken spawner. I imagine many mods would conflict here. All I find is a cage, all that remains of what it once did, a hum of power. I am sure I will find a use for it. I throw it into my bag. These swarm spiders aren’t worth keeping intact. Now if I found a zombie, skeleton, creeper those kinds of spawners. I may very well go to great lengths to keep the spawner intact.

Moving onto the elephant in the room, in this case, the chest. Opening it, crossing my fingers for a special sapling. I am quickly disappointed. All I got was a sickly oak, poison potatoes, and a charm of keeping 1. All rather mediocre drops. A shame but the dungeons aren’t super rare, I will find more.

Now, why I was confident I would find leaf dungeons? It seems from what I can tell, dungeons that are naturally born appear as normal. Whereas structures like villages, wizard towers. You know; clearly artificial buildings require building. It’s a working theory I have yet to disprove. I should see if I can find some books on dungeons. I would likely enjoy such a read. Would you look at me, I used to hate books and now I always return to them. How things change I suppose.

After leaving the tree, and it's annoying associated I continue on. Finding a biome with little trees. Every part of this place has some trees but this place is as desolate as it gets. It doesn’t take too long before I find another robust oak; sadly lacking in a leaf dungeon. Unperturbed I continue, finding 3 smaller robust oak trees. 2 of which contained a leafy dungeon. I got lucky in one and found a ‘tree of sorting’. It pretty much just sorts your chests for you. Invaluable all the same for lazy people such as me. Lets me delay make an applied energistic ME system.

I do wonder if I could breed such trees, although with their magical origin; I don’t hold much hope. These dungeons have 4 magical saplings you can gain: Time, sorting, mining, and transformation. The first accelerates the time in its area, I don’t know if it affects people now but I should test this. The sorting we have been over. The mining tree brings ores to the surface for you to mine. I can imagine that would be worth a small fortune in town. The transformation tree, now that’s the most interesting. Like the silver wood tree, it converts the biome under and around it to an enchanted forest. The twilight forests version, not the thaumcraft. Now, what would happen if these biome spreading function were to compete. I am interested in testing this.

Either way, it results in a very attractive biome, something to do if I get bored I suppose. Continue on my journey, I finally find a structure. It appears to be a liches castle from what I recall. Sadly I cannot attack it until I defeat the naga. Still, it’s a blessing, all structures are in cardinal directions of each other. Now I have found 1 I have found them all.

Deciding to make my choice a little fun, I spin in a circle. Stopping at a random moment; then snapping to the closest cardinal direction and moving on. In this case, I found myself moving north. I placed a telepad outside the liches castle for easy access later.

Moving through the beautiful forest, I quickly find the humidity rising. Before I know it I am in a swampland area. If I recall, ‘grumble’ ah yes death by hunger is this area's restriction. Must be the hydras home. Placing another telepad I go back to the liches area. Picking east this time I continue on.

Gliding across the sky gracefully, I find the terrain starts to take on a hill like quality. Waves of ground flowing like waves as I pass. Trees lightly dotting the terrain; almost hypnotizing. Continuing on past the hilly area, I can't help but note how small the biomes are. In the overworld, every biome is positively massive, here… closer to the original game. I wonder why? Or am I just getting lucky? Only one way to find out, we continue on.

The highlands continue to stretch on, ‘gazing over the terrain’ I spot it. A naga courtyard, exactly what I want. Scouting the surrounding area first before descending into the courtyard. Spotting a sleeping giant green snake.

Seeing as it's asleep, no shame in attacking while it's unaware. Carefully approaching, sword in hand; I get about 10 paces away before it opens its eyes. Looking directly at me it quickly rises a “Hiss” reverberating over the hills. “Shit, worth a try I suppose.”

Immediedlty running towards it to strike, it hits me with its tail. Me reenacting a bowling ball tumble to the side. Air knocked out of me I quickly rise to my feet. It's barreling towards me. With a quick decision, I throw myself to the left narrowly avoiding a bite coming straight for me. Getting my bearings I strike its side, my ghostly sword doing a deep gash in its side.

This is far harder than I anticipated, biting my lip as it turns to face me. Pain and anger in its eyes, it goes to strike me again. I dodged to the side again, only to find its strike a feint. It recovered far faster going for a bite. As quick as a flash I use my armor's flight to escape its grasp. Confusion filling its face as its prey disappeared. Rising behind it I drop down, sword firmly planting between 2 vertebrae.

It quickly squirms, splitting into two parts, “I… forgot about that” I quickly strike its tail, whittling down its health before it fully forms into a second naga. I manage to get it halfway down before jumping off, avoiding an angry snake's teeth. Seeing both of them come straight towards me, I pop a strength potion before doing a stupid action and running towards them. I manage to slide under the first snake's head, cutting a long gash across its neck before the second body slams me to the ground.

The second snake is clearly very weak now, it's still 2 on 1 so I must be careful. I wince as I feel bruises under my Armor. I use my Armors flight to dodge a strike coming towards me, heading towards the weakened naga. I use every bit of speed I can muster to grab the snake's mouth. Stopping it from closing on my head. Pushing back; it snaps closed with a lot of force, grabbing my sword I strike it between the eyes. The second snake is dead.

Turning to the final snake, I see the bloodlust in its eyes. A red mist descends over them, narrowly avoiding a frenzied beast. It's swiping its tail wildly, mouth snapping like a whip towards me. It managed to bite my arm in its frenzy, feeling the blood drain down. I quickly fly away. Eating a golden apple for regeneration before continuing. Using my flight and gravity together I strike straight down with my sword. It didn’t dodge, its will was obscured by its rage. I manage to strike its right eye and some of its face. Partially blinded it writhes in pain.

Taking a chance I run towards the writhing beast, plunging my sword through its neck. Finding a lot of resistance, I continue. Straining my arm as the liquid strength runs out. Its frenzies grow in strength, death throws. It suddenly slows, blood dripping down its next it collapses. I remove my blade and plunge it into the skull of the beast. Ending its pain and suffering.

I sit back exhausted, the fight was both mentally and physically taxing. Avoiding so many attacks, having to settle for cuts rather than strikes; a hard fight for sure. I watch in slight comfort as the snake disintegrates into particles. A few items left behind. Looking at the items, I find a golden trophy and 10 scales, pitiful. A hard battle for little returns, yet this was my first boss battle. Abuzz with energy from the life and death battle. I enjoyed that more than I should.

Clapping my hands together, “Time to get to work.” The blocks around this courtyard cannot be crafted. So with my mindset, I gather every single block here. I am unlikely to use them, but I also am not one to waste a resource.

Heading home victories, I take out some beef I bought at the market, for quite a price might I add. Making roast beef, I season it with salt and slice it thinly. Making a large number of thick beef sandwiches. I even gave some to both Sling and Chic. Outside is deep into the night, twilight messing with my sense of time. Nothing to be done. It was fun, I will definitely enjoy exploring that mod in time.

Settling down for the evening, I grind up some of the flowers I have into pigment. Combining them with oil slowly and carefully I produce oil paint. Not the best oil paint but paint none the less. Settling down for the evening I craft a white canvas from string and cloth.

Priming it with an extremely thin layer of white paint, I consider what to paint. I have an idea, let's paint the market. I’ll do it tomorrow though. Crafting a wide variety of brushes, I prepare it like a kit to take to town tomorrow.

Looking forward to it, even if I am a poor painter. I get a good night's rest, recuperating the mental stamina I exhausted earlier this evening. It's far more exhausting than it was in Minecraft; I could fight several monsters back to back yet here. No chance, you need tactics, though; you can get hurt its not even close.

Yet the thought of fights makes my heart beat loudly in my ear. I guess it’s a little too much fun.