Chapter 404 - Enemy not found (Patreon)

Sofia braced herself behind her large bone shield, with the mithril kite shield as a core and the [Bone dominus] blessing on top of it, she was confident that it would stop the drones’ attacks.

The hundreds of black orbs crashed straight into the shield as Sofia rammed into them on her way down. The sound of the impacts was deafening but the damage was minimal. The bone layer of the shield cracked but did not break, and Sofia was mostly safe. She did lose some life for the first time during the trial, as her arm still had to bear the impact of the black orbs on the shield, but it was minimal. In truth, it was her stamina which had taken a big hit.

Health : 127 216 / 127 250

Stamina : 23 161 / 31 150

Mana : 321 501 / 417 100

[Sanctified grounds] is saving my ass.

Sofia crashed shield-first into one of the drones, its globulous body exploding into a rain of sticky black goo.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 209]’

As she touched ground, Sofia was enveloped by a radiant shield of light, which came just in time as another close-by drone’s body had extended into a spike, lunging right at her. The magic shield deflected the blow, and Sofia striked back with her sword-scepter, creating an explosion of solar light as she slammed into the creature.

The magic shield could take another two, maybe three similar hits, and Sofia was still surrounded by seven drones in close proximity while Pareth and the spiders were busy with the Amalgam.

Unwilling to take any more risk, Sofia boxed herself within thick walls of bones. It would not hold long, but she only needed a few seconds anyway. She grabbed her shield she was standing on, and kept summoning more and more bones around her to absorb the attacks of the drones furiously trying to pierce through.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 218]’

A first drone died.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 204]’

Then another one.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 227]’

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 225]’

Then again. The drones started falling like flies. They had been hit by the shockwave of the explosive bolt, and the solar explosion, trimming their health down, and the constant damage from the rot and [THE GLORIOUS] title was enough to finish them off.

Not to mention Bookie striking them with ranged attacks from further away.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 232]’

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 247]’

With only one drone left alive, Sofia pinpointed its position with her mana senses, stored all the bone walls at once, and struck with her [Spine of the Black Sun] again.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 249]’

Thanks for the shield, Bookie.

She turned to see how Pareth was doing, surprisingly enough, he had lost some life to the Amalgam even with [Sanctified grounds] active and while fighting defensively with a shield.

Name : Pareth

Health : 25 465 603 / 37 146 780

Stamina : 12 600 384 / 12 600 384

Mana : 42 800 / 49 800

The rot is working but it’s slow.

Sofia raised her shield. As a blessed construct, for all intents and purposes, it was a skeleton. A very sturdy one, at that, so to say, one with a lot of health.

[Saintess’ madness]

Her arm raised and cocked back, her muscles tensed, Sofia let her mana infuse her shield as she waited for an opening.

A ray of blinding light shot out from Bookie’s High-priest scepter, stopping the Amalgam dead in its tracks for an instant. The light gave Pareth an opportunity to disengage and cast his [Chains of the four seals], while the spiders spat balls of web at the creature.

Ensnared by multiple spells, the amalgam readied a lot of mana to unleash a spell of its own and free itself from its bonds.

Sofia had a clear shot. The shield was enveloped in fire as it flew straight into one of the amalgam’s two ‘heads’, and exploded on impact in a great ball of fire.

Eat your Mana Burn, bitch! Sofia shouted in her mind as Bookie’s magic shield broke from the bone splinters of her own attack reaching all the way back to where she was.

And the amalgam did exactly what it was always going to do, unleashing a wave of black energy in all directions, and suffering a huge backlash from [Saintess’ madness]s’ mana burn.

The wave of energy was too weak to damage Pareth, and Sofia simply avoided it, teleporting forward into it with [Summon Self] right as it was about to hit her. Only Bookie couldn’t avoid it, choosing to unsummon itself and return to Sofia rather than to be killed by the attack.

The amalgam was free again, the head hit by the shield was in poor shape, with the mithril core of the shield still lodged into it, but the creature was still alive.

With a ray of light, Sofia reapplied a new layer of rot on the Amalgam as Pareth charged at it. The amalgam prepared a new spell of its own.

It’s not going to summon more drones again, is it?

Sofia started channeling an explosive bolt again, as fast as she could. She only had about a hundred and fifty thousand mana left, a lot had gone into the shield throw and the rot.

But what the amalgam did was the same black javelin move the regular amalgam had once shot at Sofia dozens of times. Except there were two of them at once instead of one.

Two heads…

Of course, the javelins were both aimed at Sofia.

Pareth stood before one, and the spider skeletons all jumped at the second.

The attacks never reached Sofia, but the spider skeletons were gone.

The amalgam was starting to run out of mana. It changed its fighting style, morphing its body, creating new black limbs to attack Pareth from all sides, and trying to get past him. But Pareth was steadfast. Trying to harm him, or trying to circle around him to get to Sofia, it might have been able to do either one, but in attempting to do both, it achieved neither.

This weird standstill lasted twenty seconds, during which Pareth had to slowly backpedal under the monster’s assault, giving away some terrain. Only, for each step back that he took, giving terrain to the amalgam, Sofia herself was flying backwards, getting further and further away from the monster, and readying her bolt.

With a hundred-thousand mana charged into the bolt, Sofia released the beast. The blue bolt of plasma left Sofia’s hand with a bang, and Pareth disappeared from the Monster’s side, reappearing in front of Sofia, his shield up and ready.

Sofia’s vision turned mostly white. Even for her enhanced eye it was hard to see much of anything at all besides the blurry form of Pareth standing before her.

It was far from her largest bolt to date, but it was the largest she had ever thrown into such a closed space.

A system notification appeared as the shockwave of the bolt hit Pareth and the following heat wave washed over them.

‘You have defeated [Twin-Headed Sunless Amalgam - Lv. 299 - Imprint badly damaged]’

Sofia let herself fall ass-first to the floor.

“Fucking hell.”

Grabbing Pareth’s mana heart from within her armor when the explosion had died down, she held it up for him to grab.

“Go get the imprint, we don’t want that shit to go to waste after all that effort.”

Sofia watched as Pareth went and grabbed the imprint as well as the Sunless debris and her mithril shield from the heavily damaged dungeon corridor riddled with holes leading to a black void. She gave a side glance at her health now that the [Sanctified Grounds] ran out.

Health : 85 957 / 85 980

I lost 23 Health… Not a lot, but that much I’m not getting back… I should have been more careful.

Nightmare difficulty, huh.

How likely is it that this was the boss and that the dungeon is over?

In the middle of a random corridor? Yeah, no chance. So this was just the appetizer. Great.

At least, we got two more skill shards out of it. Pareth’s mana heart blessing really shines in times like these. Two hundred imprint power collected at once when we would have gotten fuck-all otherwise because I ruined the monster with the rot and the bolt.

Still, I can’t get over the fact that the Sunless amalgam’s skill costs the equivalent of 100 000 stat points in imprint power. It better be fucking worth the price and the hassle of hunting these things.

Seriously, myself aside, who in their right mind would see these things and think, ‘Yeah let’s kill ten to twenty of them to get some random skill!’ For most people they would just take a dark lance to the face and die.

Trials really are no joke, no matter how insane you may be for your level…

I’m still feeling confident, though… Or maybe not. Actually. If this place really has a boss stronger than this amalgam… This might not end well.

I can’t leave but there’s the option of waiting for the end of the timer. Supposing that it ejects me from the dungeon. It might also just kill me and Pareth, for all I know. Just dump us into the Magin’s void as the dungeon itself disappears or something. I can’t really take the risk.

Unless there’s zero chance to beat the boss, but the system wouldn’t do that. Let’s get ready first. I need to rebuild the shield, regenerate my mana and resummon Bookie.

The madness shield throw was a bit of an improvised move but it worked great. I should remember to do that again.

Well, maybe throwing my shield away isn’t so smart… But it’s a skeleton that’s already always in my hand, so yeah.