Inside the final room of the Dungeon, a certain large cross between a wolf and a bear was lying down with vines trailing from the place behind it and into its flesh. The vines lay limp for a moment before the door to the room opened and the Harvest God’s foe walked in with a scowl on her face.

The vines twitched once, then twice, then a third time before a line of red began to course through each and every one of them, all leading into the back of the beast. Once the red within the vines reached the Forest Guardian Avatar’s body, the beast jerked awake and began to convulse violently as though it was suffering from a severe seizure.

The body of the Forest Guardian Avatar lifted up onto its hind legs and roared louder than it ever had before as its body bulged and many red lines crept through its musculature just under its skin. Its fur began to recede and tighten around its body, going from a bushy cloak that would stymie attacks by volume to a tight weave that bordered on being a fabric in and of itself.

The wolf-bear’s claws enlarged and extended as its paws shifted and sprouted a fifth digit, each from which a fifth massive talon emerged to give the bipedal monster a pair of large, almost entirely clawed hands. The line of fur that ran down from the monster’s head to its stubby tail then began to extend, taking on more of a similar function to the quills of a porcupine as the eyes of the monster began to weep a deep reddish-black fluid before going fully red themselves.

Finally, after all of that, the vines ripped themselves off of the monster’s back, and the beast’s flesh and fur regenerated over the wounds, healing them in mere moments as its body continued to distort, losing its more bestial shape to be far more human in form. The creature’s mouth began to drool heavily before its lips peeled back and revealed a maw of long, dagger-like teeth.

The monster panted heavily for a bit before it laughed and smiled widely at the newly arrived enemy.

“You thought that you had killed me back there, but my God granted me another chance! My dead husk was fused into His Avatar, and soon so shall all those who follow His will be remade! Feed the Hunger of the Harvest! Die now, and let your blood slake His thirst for a time, slave of the Snake!”

The beast laughed as it revealed that the Chosen that Lyrhea had slaughtered so easily had been reborn in its form, but it was not met with the emotions or response that it wanted. Instead, Lyrhea replied with the most horrible insult she could muster.

A slow clap.

This caused the beastly reborn Chosen to have a distinct sense of disconnect between what its form was, what its form should have instilled within Lyrhea and Lyrhea’s own actions. It looked down at her as it towered in the distance and felt its face fall as it beheld Lyrhea’s own.

She looked entirely nonplussed, and that further destabilized the boastful and braggadocios Boss Monster.

“You….” the reborn Chosen stammered. “You should be afraid! Fear me! Fear my God!”

Lyrhea slowly shook her head while continuing to slowly clap. The Power of Mockery was Strong with this one.

“Why?!” the beast roared. It could not move against her unless she made it further in, and so it raged against the intruder, trying to incur its fury and drive it further in. “WHY?! Why do you not FEAR ME?!”

…

Lyrhea looked at the monster as it howled and screamed, sending an endless deluge of profanity, insults, and other generally disgusting words at her. She felt no real fear of this thing, though.

Now, she definitely felt threatened by its size, its bulk, its massive claws, and its whole demeanor, but it was rather hard to feel fear after watching that whole show. What was this, some ultra-hyped-up video game boss battle? Hell, she could practically smell the cringy edgelord bastard of a God’s lack of hygiene and ‘respect for wamen’ from here!

The whole presentation that she had borne witness to when she opened the door was just oozing with the taint of a mind that thought that it was ‘too cool’ to be understood by ‘the sheeple and mindless idiots out there in the world’. She especially took offense to the whole fact that once she made it to the point where the whole thing began she was ripped from her own personal view of things and made to watch what could only be called a cinematic reveal of the creature being awoken.

And so, after seeing all of that, she had nothing but disdain and contempt for the monster before her and the God that made it. There was no fear, just a sense of pity that the reborn Chosen and its God thought themselves so cool and intimidating.

If she had faced it without the whole flyover and no warning it would have been a hell of a lot scarier, though. Also, the voice coming from it was not really adding to the whole intended feeling. The already cracked and whiny voice of the Chosen while he was alive was now even more like that of the typical teenage edgelord going through puberty, and that really took away from the whole ‘big, scary monster’ thing that it seemed to want to have going for itself.

Plus, if she really was so much of a massive target for the creature and if it could attack her, why was it not doing so right now while she stayed put and mocked it in a mostly silent and unimpressed fashion? Obviously, the thing wasn’t able to do much unless Lyrhea moved farther inside, and once that thought hit her she decided to try something.

She stopped her slow, monotonous clapping for a moment with one hand while doing a still-slow one-handed clap with the other that only further enraged the Chosen and reached to her waist. With one hand she unlatched a brittle old vial made of glass that she had found during her trips out and about the town before setting it on fire and only then stopped her one-handed clapping.

She held the sealed vial in one hand, pulled her arm back, and lobbed the thing like a grenade. If her theory was correct, the creature would neither move nor try and block the attack, and her theory proved to be correct. Perhaps out of arrogance, perhaps out of some inbuilt programming, or perhaps out of stupidity, the reborn and reformed Chosen of the edgelord Harvest God did not block her attack nor did he take a single step towards her.

As the vial left her hand, she shouted words that would strike fear into the hearts of any who heard it in the Fictional Universe the line came from, and while she was not a member of that group, she felt that the concoction was worth the words. Once those words left her mouth, she was both pleasantly surprised and slightly miffed that the person who inhabited the monster she threw her deadly brew at did not understand the reference. The poor bastard likely never touched an RTS game in his life, more's the pity. He missed out on quite a lot.

"GLA Postal Service!"

The vial slammed into the beast’s open mouth and the liquid within splashed everywhere, but mostly down the monster’s throat. And then, like a good predator, Lyrhea waited for her long-range delivery of venom to take effect, though once again it was less of a venom and more of a multi-vector omni-toxin. Maybe she was more like a certain fictional Zero Hour Doctor than she wanted to be...

But she would ponder the true nature of her oral solutions later. For now, she just had to wait a few minutes for her delivery to take effect. That, she felt, would at least partially tip the odds a bit in a certain direction.