The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 5 - Chapter 15 - The First Boss of the Beta (Patreon)

                                                             Wolf
                                           A Week and a Half Later
                                                 On the 210th floor

Well, this is interesting.

I frown as I stare at the very fancy looking set of double doors in front of me. They look like they’re made out of bones, with human skulls on the base of both ends of the double doors, and there’s a depiction of some sort of bone dragon on the doors themselves.

Guess I don’t need to guess as to what the boss is.

I quickly resummon Sapphire to me from wherever she’s currently at in the dungeon floor before waiting a few seconds for her to accept the summon. Which doesn’t take long, as just about six seconds later she appears in front of me.

“Did you find…” she cuts off after seeing the door, only to nod her head. “Yep. You found it.”

“Yeah,” I mutter while focusing on the door again. “And if this boss isn’t a bone dragon of some sort, then you’re eating a block of ice.”

Sapphire spins around to narrow her eyes on me as she asks, “Why me? Why not you?”

I just shrug. “Because.”

She huffs.

“Well, let’s see what’s behind this door,” I ignore her reaction as I reach for the door, Sapphire growing serious again as I do so. And the moment my hand touches the door, it begins to open on its own with a faint rattling sound.

My eyes narrow when I see the room on the other side of the door. Or rather, the cavern on the other side of the door.

The boss room itself starts off with a little jail cell, but with the wall at the back of the cell completely shattered, revealing a short tunnel on the other side leading to a massive cavern. And throughout the tunnel, dozens of bones from various different creatures can be seen lying around, some in differing states of decay and destruction. Meanwhile the jail cell itself has its door lying next to the bars outside the cell, not on its hinges and very clearly having been smashed outwards by something big. Along with some of the bars on the jail cell which are dented.

I slowly begin walking into the room while transforming into my hunter form and transforming a layer of my skin beneath the surface into voided eternal ice.

My eternal ice hasn’t been as helpful in the beta dungeon as the other dungeons, purely because every floor has its monsters starting at a level dependent on my own and not at some sort of default level. Meaning anything with fire can immediately melt my ice, and a few of the incredibly strong monsters can at least divert my ice. Especially the few void creature mini bosses I’ve fought. Those things can ignore it entirely.

I’ve also learned through those void creatures that my level isn’t necessarily what matters for eternal ice, since this is the variant element of the progenitor of ice, who doesn’t use Grim’s System. What really matters is my purity of life force that is put in the ice when I make it. That life force is then compared to the life force of whatever interacts with it, if it has any.

If it doesn’t, then the ice becomes more complicated, and I haven’t figured out how it works yet. But every creature made attack or element has a tiny portion of their life force inserted into it. That life force is then automatically regenerated by their body after the attack.

Something the System calls stamina.

Certainly an interesting way for the System to turn reality into a more game-like existence, and absolutely fits The Reaper’s focus on entertainment.

I glance at Sapphire to find her transforming into her spider form after we enter the jail cell itself, then growing larger and larger. So I face forwards again while focusing on the walls of the tunnel in front of us.

Even the walls themselves look like they have bone fragments just piercing into the walls. But despite all the bones, I don’t see any undead or monsters at all.

We enter the tunnel before slowly walking through it until we reach the cavern itself, which is enormous with a very large pile of bones in the center of it.

Nothing happens after we enter the cavern, so we continue walking further in. And since the boss is giving us time to prepare – which it’ll probably regret – I let out the large amount of voided eternal ice my body has generated into the area, freezing all of the bones around me and the ground itself.

It isn’t until we arrive at the base of the bone mountain itself that the bones begin to shift lightly, the ice and frost on them being broken and knocked off in the process. Which has my eyes narrowing.

“Looks like the boss is above 105% of my level,” I mutter, Sapphire lightly nodding her massive head in response.

We both stop moving as the bones making up the mountain all begin to move further and further inwards until they start joining together, forming some sort of being that I can’t recognize just yet, since the bones are doing it so slowly. So out of curiosity, I wave my hand, sending an arc of pure ice straight at the entity being formed, but the arc simply cracks when it strikes the being, making my eyes widen in surprise.

Hard bones.

I narrow my eyes on the bones, looking at them with more focus than before until I notice a very faint bit of elements being emitted from it. An element I don’t recognize.

Or maybe some type of magic or pure element protecting the bones?

My attention is drawn back to the being as the bones slowly begin to move faster and faster, constructing the thing’s body at a much faster pace than before. And by now I can very clearly tell that they’re constructing a massive dragon made out of bones. One spanning nearly a hundred meters in length.

“This might be a bit of a challenge,” I mutter, vaguely noting Sapphire nodding her head in agreement.

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