Wolf

Almost as soon as I enter the ninety-fifth floor, before I can even take in my surroundings, a notification appears at the center of my interface.

Special Boss Announcement

The auction for selecting the Special Boss has now begun.

As a Competitor, you may not join the auction.

The auction will end in ten minutes, and the Special Boss will be spawned in one hour.

This Special Boss will be stronger than regular bosses and will drop a Mythic Box as a reward.

However, if it is killed by multiple Competitors working as a team, it will instead drop a Legendary Box for each of the Competitors who participated in killing it.

I narrow my eyes at the notification before dismissing it and looking around at my surroundings.

Just like with the other floors on this theme, I appeared on the floor right in front of a large temple. But unlike the other floors, the temple in front of me is covered in… eggs? Egg sacs?

What the hell…?

At that thought, a tiny scythian crawler breaks out of one of the eggs and brings a scowl to my face.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I thought I was done with those things!!

Right as I’m about to send a wave of icy mist at them to freeze them all, several of the larger egg sacs scattered around the temple, and even the few that I didn’t notice before in the trees begin to hatch, revealing dozens of strange looking scythian creatures. Each of them looks like some sort of bug, but with the same scythian, plantlike mouth as the other scythian golems have had.

This floor theme is so bizarre…

I spread my arms out and let out all of the stored ice element inside of my body before making it spread out through the entire area, freezing everything in sight. However, a few of the bugs actually manage to continue moving, albeit rather sluggishly, even after being frozen by somehow wobbling back and forth while ripping out the grass and dirt beneath them.

My eyes widen at the sight, but I manipulate the ice covering them to pierce straight through each of them.

These scythian monsters… they’re starting to break my current idea of eternal ice with how many times they’re finding loopholes in it without actually breaking it.

I look around at the various monsters before shaking my head and walking towards the entrance to the temple.

Guess everything has loopholes.

One hour later

I pause right after ripping out the throat of another one of the scythian brawlers as another notification appears on my interface before ignoring the massive, falling corpse to read it.

Special Boss Announcement

The Special Boss will now spawn.

Good luck.

My eye twitches at the second line of the notification, but my attention is quickly distracted from it when a loud rumbling sound echoes throughout the entire temple and everything begins to shake. This lasts for several seconds before an id tag appears in the center of my vision without actually being near any living creature.

_-| Qxiolu – Scythian Veriptitro – Level 1070 |-_

Uh… what?

Why is that the-

My thoughts are interrupted as the gray id suddenly vanishes as if it had never been there in the first place.

I blink twice in confusion, only to stumble slightly as the ground suddenly begins to shake again.

Is there an earthquake or something? Assuming that’s even possible in the dungeon without it being an actual part of the theme.

The tremors continue rapidly for several seconds before eventually slowing down a little and remaining at a seemingly random pace, without any pattern to it.

Wait… could it be?

I stand still for a few minutes, just focusing on the tremors for a little bit before coming to a conclusion.

Did the Special Boss cause those tremors?

I’ve yet to see a boss that’s been able to cause something that large before, with the exception of maybe the deepsea kraken. But it’s probably possible.

The creature’s species is also still a type of scythian, and scythians seem to break my common sense a lot.

I narrow my eyes at the thought before opening the System Forums to look for information on the scythian veriptitro. However, after a few minutes of searching, I fail to find anything, so I continue searching deeper and deeper before I finally find a thread with the name Qxiolu in the title.

Wasn’t that the monster’s name…?

I look around for a second, only to open the thread and find some rather… disturbing… information in it.

Qxiolu – The giant devouring artificial plant.

Qxiolu is the name of the enormous, artificial plant created by the Scythian Society during the early ages of the System. It almost immediately took over the entirety of the planet Quattle by burrowing itself into the ground and growing throughout the planet.

The creature feeds off of any living creature that it feels near one of its roots by sending a fraction of its root up to the surface in the form of an ‘avatar’ that it can control. The avatar has a form that mimics other scythian monsters, except with various plant life growing around and making up its body.

Additionally, the creature’s preferred method to hunt is to first send fake roots up to the surface to play with its prey before eventually sending an avatar to devour it whole.

However, the most well-known fact about the monster is the cruel digestive system that it has.

When a creature is swallowed whole by the creature, it is immediately paralyzed before slowly being pulled all the way through the roots to the creature’s main body. At the same time, the roots are filled with a strange fluid that caries oxygen into body of the prey while also preparing its body for digestion once it reaches the main body.

In an incredibly painful manner.

That’s… cruel.

It makes sense though. After all, if the creature can really get so big that it can cover an entire planet, then anything that enters its roots from far away would probably spoil before even reaching its main body.

At that thought, I continue reading the thread in search of weaknesses that I can exploit.

Because that Mythic Box sounds rather nice.