Chapter 116 (Patreon)

Chapter 116

WARNING

WARNING

WARNING

DUNGEON BOSS FIGHT: BLUE DRAKE, HAS BEEN INITIATED.

DUNGEON CAPTIUS HAS SEALED OFF YOUR POINTS OF EXIT UNTIL THE BATTLE IS COMPLETE.

BEGINNING BATTLE IN

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

The ground shattered, trembled and split.  A massive shockwave directed forward was followed by an enormous globe of swirling blood mana, vaporizing the ground underneath and directly in front of Riven and blasting the entire front wall into smithereens before colliding with the drake’s large yellow eye.

*KABOOM*

The eye was decimated and its huge head flung backwards in a spray of debris.  The enormous multi-ton creature went torpedoing head over heels, roaring, thrashing about in agony with wings and claws as it smashed into a crowd of its lesser cousins that were crushed under the drake’s weight.

The monster’s body came to an abrupt stop when it violently slammed into the far wall of a much larger underground chamber, an octagon chamber many hundreds of yards apart in all directions with a skylight reaching miles high and numerous statues of draconic figures spaced out between ruined stone buildings.

Julia and Tim both took in deep gasps, Hakim just gawked with incomprehension, and Caleb began to laugh like a madman after seeing the huge drake blown backwards like a speeding bullet through the enormous room.

Riven’s red eyes shifted right, not seeing them through the debris in the air but hearing their hundreds of heartbeats close by.  Raising a hand, dozens of spinning red blades smoldered into being around his position.  Pulling on the blood of the fallen bodies that’d just been crushed in the drake’s wake, spiraling wisps of red were ripped out and quickly condensed into over a hundred more.

“Get fucked.”

Riven’s fingers extended and a swarm of spinning blades tore through the rubble still falling through the air, blindly carpet bombing the crowds of enemies nearby with each disc exploding seconds after impact.  Explosion after explosion rocked the underground ruin to the screams and cries of lizardmen and other reptiles, leaving a field of ruined bodies and rubble when the dust finally cleared.

The drake picked itself up from the other side of the enormous room and screeched in anger, sending out a fireball twice Riven’s size that sped towards him and crashed into his body.  The impact was enough to blow him back a couple feet, but he remained standing and when the dust cleared again - his skin was covered in black metal plates and he continued to writhe in the flames of hellfire.

The drake’s one remaining eye narrowed upon seeing Riven take no damage, and it started to flap its wings - chanting in a low serpentine voice to cast a spell while wind started roiling about it in a tornado of power.  The small stone buildings around the large beasts ripped apart, adding their rubble to the swirling vortex of silver mana.

In turn, Riven drew on his own reserves and the newly decimated bodies of the lizards nearby.  More blood tore out of the corpses and swirled about him, dancing about him in a howling, raging storm of crimson might.  It began to freeze, then liquify, freeze and liquify, over and over again while fluidly churning around him in a spiraling storm to match the drake’s own.

The drake snarled, Riven’s aura pulsed, and the two energies launched across the room in a maddening howl of power.

***

Hakim watched the raging battle take place before him with utter shock.  He’d never seen anything like it, the sheer amount of energy being unleashed between the combatants was unlike any fight he’d even heard about.

The drake and caster darted through the air, with the drake flapping its wings and imbuing them with air magic of some kind to maneuver and dodge incoming projectiles that shot out faster than Hakim could even keep up with.  They were just red blurs, splitting the sound barrier and being launched by black nets that would create festering wounds in the drake’s body whenever the red tipped spears penetrated.  Sometimes they’d miss due to the amazing dexterity of the great beast, but the man sparking with red lightning was just as fast - and whenever he found himself in a tight spot he’d create a rift through space to teleport away and send a barrage from behind the monster pursuing him.

Black lightning bolts cracked the air, fireballs and blades of solidified wind tore and blew through buildings, and spires of crystalized blood whipped through the air like living things as they sought out the drake to crash and splinter against its hide.

“Who… is that?” Julie asked with awe, raising both eyebrows and covering her open mouth with one hand when a red snowstorm billowed out around the caster mid-air to blind the drake.

The monster snapped its jaws, creating a shockwave to blow the bloody snowflakes away only to have another bolt of black lightning crash into its face.  The drake screamed in pain and slammed into the ground, but pulsed with a shimmering gray light seconds later and exploded outwards in all directions - destroying the landscape around it and launching the caster backwards to skip like a stone on a lake across the ruined ground.

Hakim’s heart sank and he began to panic when he saw the man’s neck bent backwards at an unnatural angle, and Tim screamed out for their ally to get up.  Julie held her breath and Caleb’s hands were gripping one another so hard that his knuckles turned white.

But to their relief and sheer amazement, the man picked himself up like nothing had even happened.

The drake’s remaining eye went wide, and it snorted in disbelief when the caster’s neck violently snapped back into place.  Manually cracking his neck again with both hands and stretching a bit, he shook himself and looked as good as new.

“He should be dead!” Caleb wheezed out while trembling violently.  “How is he not dead?  His neck was obviously broken!”

The drake seemed to agree, and it charged furiously towards the man in a pincer attack as two dozen of the lizardmen rushed out from the shadows at his back.

“Athela, Azmoth, Fay.”

Three portals ripped open in the air around the man.  One was void black, another rimmed in hellfire, and the third was shrouded in purple miasma.  Each of them produced a different creature, a different demon.  One was a stunningly beautiful succubus with sky-blue skin, white hair, black wings - and she wore a wide smile of perfect white teeth.  Another was a titanic, four-armed brute lacking skin - adorned in thick black metal plates between patches of red muscle, while its flaming body also sported a tail and two additional sets of eel-like maws from behind.  The last was another menacing woman of black skin, six scythe-like blades spreading out of her back, and a long blade-like tongue that dripped necrotic venom.  These newfound allies took to the battle immediately without a single word being exchanged.

The man abruptly vanished, turning invisible and splitting into three versions of himself that sprinted into different directions.  The succubus launched herself skywards, with green runes lighting up in the drake’s path of charging, while the arachnoid woman blurred towards the nearest group of lizardmen and began rapidly decapitating them or removing them of limbs in a flurry of blades.

The huge, flaming monster that was twice the size of any man Hakim had ever seen slammed its numerous fists together and grinned at the oncoming drake that was barreling through buildings at high speed.  He looked left only long enough to open up the two eel-like appendages over his shoulders, producing two torrents of flame that bathed another group of blue-scaled lizards and cooking over ten of them instantly.

The drake had changed targets now that it lost track of the caster, and its maw opened up with another roar.  Crackling sparks started accumulating from its innards,traveling up the inside of its neck and condensing into a ball of lightning that flashed forward and collided with the taunting, flaming four armed demon in front of it.

Fire and lightning clashed, and the drake was only fifty yards away when it hit Fay’s invisible minefield.

Unholy runes lit up with green light and detonated, blowing small holes in the huge monster and causing it to stumble.  But its momentum kept it going forward, and rune after rune continued to blast into the monster when another series of sonic booms rippled forward from across the room.

Red and black magic tore through the air and collided with the drake’s neck and shoulder, again piercing its thick scales and creating festering wounds with the black net-like ends of the sharp projectiles that ate away at the draconic monster’s flesh.

Enraged now, the drake whipped its head around to fire another lightning strike at the caster’s direction only to have its head yanked down by the lower jaw when the large flaming demon leapt up to grab a tooth.

“AZMOTH CLIMB INTO THROAT AND BASH BASH BASH!!!”

Breathing flames and ignoring the cascade of lightning despite pieces of his armor being torn off, the demon started biting, tearing and ripping into the drake’s insides with gleeful, insidious cackles.  But what really did massive amounts of damage to the inside was when the demon slammed its foot down and set a shockwave of kinetic energy throughout the throat - ripping apart layers of flesh and bone alike.

The drake immediately began to thrash, panicking now and rolling around on the ground frantically while trying to create more and more lightning inside its throat to get the monster inside its body out again.  Its body sparked and rippled with electricity, but still the demon raged inside.

Hakim was so caught up in the battle before him that he didn’t hear the scraping of claws nearby until it was too late.

*CLANG*

Hakim and everyone in his group startled, and he nearly tripped over his own feet, stumbling back when the flash of a sword was stopped by another blade only an inch from his face.

Right in front of him, a lizardman gagged and gurgled - blood trickling out of its toothy mouth while it stared wide-eyed into the sinister smile of the woman with pitch-black skin and six blade-limbs protruding from her back.  In one clawed hand she held the lizardman’s heart, one of her blades was holding back the lizardman’s sword that would have no doubt killed Hakim had it fell, and two more blades pierced the monster’s stomach and neck.

The demoness slowly extended her long, black tongue, licking blood off one of the lizardman’s wounds before ripping out all of her blades at once and letting the body drop to the ground.  Tossing the heart of the monster to the side flippantly, she calmly turned and set the gaze of her red eyes on Julie, then Tim, then Hakim.

She completely ignored Caleb.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here…” A familiar voice asked with a chittering laugh, and the smile she gave them was rather genuine.  “You’ve got to be more careful, you know.  We won’t always be here to save you.”

*BOOM*

The room exploded when another of Fay’s minefields blew apart a group of lizard monsters that’d been tricked into pursuing another hallucination, and flashes of red light illuminated the room overhead when more of the caster’s projectiles flashes forward to puncture the hide of the huge, flailing drake that had smoke billowing out of holes in its neck.

The demonic woman with black skin shifted her gaze to the right where another eight lizardmen were rushing through a corridor and towards the treasure room’s wrecked wall, and she let out a loud belch.  “Be right back!”

A blur of blades and shadow collided with the group of reptilian warriors before they even knew what hit them.  The woman’s delighted laughter was mixed with the peppering thuds of red needles being launched from her arachnoid limbs and the sounds of body parts being chopped off.  Meanwhile, the lizardmen could only scramble away for their lives and scream.