3.37 – Boss

With a greeting like that, the last of Natalie’s doubts were dispelled. Sofia’s exasperated suggestion that her class might make the bosses perverted was clearly not true—or at least not for this encounter. The dryad seemed far more interested in turning them into forest fertilizer than anything.

Natalie didn’t waste a moment, seeing the dryad raise her staff. She charged forward. The four patches of dirt in each cardinal direction meant something, but she kept that in the back of her mind—she couldn’t know exactly what until it revealed itself.

Quickly covering distance toward the dryad, her opponent raised her staff into the air in reply, pointing the shaft of wood skyward. Her previously blue eyes turned white, vibrating with energy, and power gathered at the tip, humming to Natalie’s magical senses—and then a half-second later, to her physical eyesight too, as crackling white sparks manifested on the gnarled tip of the staff.

The hair on the back of her neck raised, and instinct alone told her what to do. She flung herself sideways, her plan for charging head-first into the dryad relegated to second priority.

A second later, searing white lighting erupted into the ground exactly where Natalie had been headed. A thunderous clap echoed through the air, enough to leave her ears ringing, and Natalie briefly wondered how well she would have held up against a lighting strike.

Bosses weren’t called bosses without a reason—they were by the far the most common way for experienced delvers to find their careers abruptly cut off. Being roasted in a single shot wasn’t fully off the table. Though, a durable class like Natalie probably wouldn’t die in a single hit. Liz or Jordan, though? More likely, at least for a strong charge-up attack like that.

Which was why it was so important Natalie kept the dryad’s attention. She’d flung herself recklessly sideways, knowing she absolutely had to avoid whatever incoming attack had been gathering at the dryad’s staff tip, but she still recovered smoothly, turning her tumble sideways into a roll and finally staggering to her feet. The powerful spell hadn’t been free; the dryad’s eyes were still fading from their blinding white and back to their natural color, recovering from the expenditure of mana.

Natalie cobbled together her own key spell. Illusions shimmered around her body, growing limbs and weapons where they didn’t exist. They were less refined than in her fight against Elida, because she didn’t use [Empower]. Burning progression points whenever she fought a boss simply wasn’t wise—that powerful ability needed to be saved for moments that truly mattered. If things turned sour, then obviously she would tap into that expensive resource, but if at all possible, she wanted to handle this with her base class.

Natalie arrived to the tall green woman right as she finished recovering from her lightning spell. Lowering her staff and gripping it two-handed, she swung in a wide arc before Natalie could get her own attack out.

Though seeming like a mage class, the dryad’s physical abilities weren’t lacking. Natalie barely managed to duck the hurtling piece of wood, and it soared above her head with a whistle of wind that doubly confirmed any attacks from this creature wouldn’t be a third as easy to shrug off as anything else she’d fought thus far, barring maybe the mini-boss they’d gone up against.

Prior to this point, the humanoid monsters she’d been fighting had all been either shorter or equal height to her. Dealing with the eight-foot dryad, not to mention her gigantic reach with her wooden staff, wasn’t an easy feat. Power and swiftness mattered, but so did the sheer reality of physical advantages—being able to swing and smash a gigantic rod of wood from seven feet away was rather hard to deal with as a shield-and-hammer wielder.

Still, practiced footwork and keeping a careful eye on the dryad meant she could sneak her own attacks in. The dryad blocked or dodged them, but every moment that Natalie kept the creature’s attention meant safety—and opportunity—for her teammates. They had hardly been sitting around; Sofia and Jordan had edged in from either of the woman’s flanks, and the dryad grunted as blades scraped her green flesh. The injuries oozed a dark green ichor, and it had a potent, disgusting smell, like rotting earth.

Irritated at having been surrounded, the dryad slammed her staff into the floor, and a shockwave blasted all three of the melee fighters backward. Natalie grunted as she hit the ground hard, but quickly recovered. Sofia and Jordan weren’t as lucky, not half as durable, and not bearing Liz’s empowering buff. A long shaft of wood hurtled toward Sofia, following up on the disabling spell, and Natalie only barely managed to barrel forward, shield-first, into the dryad’s arm. The motion deflected the strike, her opponent’s staff hitting dirt rather than Sofia’s skull, but Natalie had put herself off balance in the mad rush. A kick to the chest sent her crashing into the dirt far harder than the first time, and even with her HP, a rib might have cracked.

“Insolent,” the dryad said. “You should be honored to return to nature.”

Black slashes of energy ripped across the dryad’s body, one of Ana’s stronger, slower-channeling spells manifesting. The creature grunted in pain as a half-dozen wounds opened up across her body, tearing into her leaf-woven clothing and the smell of rotting wood filling the air to an even more pungent degree.

Abruptly, the slashing tendrils of power stopped having an effect, a white sheen of protective energy covering the dryad’s body. The boss monster pulled her staff close to her chest and closed her eyes.

Natalie staggered back to her feet. It was effectively the tank’s job to be tossed around and bullied, soaking up punishment, but she still couldn’t say she liked being manhandled like that. It was impossible to match a boss monster’s might, but the disparity in strength still annoyed her.

She focused on the fight, those thoughts only flickering through her head. The dryad was clearly entering a special phase or attack—the white light protecting her, fending off their follow-up attacks with total ease, suggested that pretty clearly. Though special phase how?

“Safe zones,” Liz cried out. “Maybe?”

It was a reasonable assumption, and a fairly common mechanic in a boss arena, so Natalie sprinted for one of the dirt patches. Sofia, just a bit slower than her, having been trying to break the protective white spell, threw herself the last several feet, the energy in the air building and the dryad’s special attack clearly starting to manifest. Natalie grunted as she caught the white-haired girl and stopped her from tumbling past the edge of the small patch of dirt.

A second later, lightning crashed down in a torrent. Dozens or hundreds of the booming streaks of light scalded the grass of the arena, so numerous and frequent the noise overlapped into one world-ending cacophony. A primal instinct had her clamping her wrists onto her ears—her hands were full—in an attempt to block the sound out. Even with her eyes closed, too, the flood of light turned her eyelids red.

Finally, several seconds later, the barrage ended, and the dryad sagged, nearly falling to her knees. The spell had drained her.

Which, of course, meant an opportunity for retaliation.

Natalie didn’t waste a second—she charged forward. The powerful lightning barrage had expended the dryad far more than her previous spells, and Natalie was rewarded with a satisfying thunk as she crashed her hammer straight into the creature’s skull. Still, it was a boss monster, and insanely durable—it only sent the dryad stumbling sideways and climbing to her feet to recover.

The fight progressed that way for some time. Several times more, the dryad called that same ultimate attack down, and the team needed to go rushing to the nearest small patches of dirt. There were a few close calls, with the timing window shrinking with each follow up. Bosses tended to get stronger as they got weaker, the opposite of how fights ought to work.

Still, they were well-prepared for this fight, even having some of their gear stolen. The whittled the boss down, bit by bit. Ana’s spells of black energy tore into green flesh, Sofia danced between retaliatory strikes and poked and slashed, and Jordan delivered occasional devastating sneak attacks.

Ana was the one who claimed the finishing blow. A cascade of thick black-energy spikes burst from the ground, impaling the dryad in dozens of places—namely, one straight through her chest.

“Insolent,” the dryad repeated balefully, glaring at Ana for a long, suspended moment—then her face went slack, and the creature finally disintegrated into motes of energy.