Rune Seeker - Book 3: Chapter 67: Boss – Phase Two

Without needing to say a word, each member of the party sprang into action.

Hiral blasted forward on bursts of Rejection, Ever Changing+ already stacked up and clenched the axes in his hands. Ten seconds wasn’t a long time until he needed to swap again, and a stack or two of Frenzy would go a long way.

Two enhanced steps was all it took for him to arrive at the same time Right came through one of Seeyela’s portals. A flaming haymaker warped the air from the impact while Hiral ducked under one swinging tentacle, flipped over a second, and blocked a third with a double-hack from his axes. Twinned Lost Echoes exploded from his dodges, and he barely turned aside the final appendage before it could take his head off.

Still, even deflecting it as he did, the reverberation from the parry sent a painful shock straight up his arms and into his shoulders. There was no way he could directly contest the squid’s strength over and over. But, practically dancing in the air on planes of Rejection, that wasn’t his plan anyway.

Juking left and then cutting right, he brought his axes across the squid’s side in a one-two combo, then leapt over a sweeping tentacle. Two more quick cuts scored minor damage—and landed more instances of the Bleeding Wounds debuff—then he dropped down before bursting back up. Hack, hack, hacking as he moved, more tentacles whipped in his direction, the whole Enemy twisting around to follow his slippery movements.

Which left it open to take a double Cinder+ and Flame Gout combo from Seena. Standing in glowing circles of blue script from Li’l Ur, her powers were benefitting from a serious boost, and she relentlessly hammered the Boss.

Not to be outdone, Left and Right had jumped into action as well, a Furious Howl from one of the wolves buffing the entire party. Though they couldn’t run on the air like Hiral could, the doubles crisscrossed back and forth from roof to roof, landing combos or crushing single blows with each pass. The impacts of their strikes rang like echoing thunder, the exact opposite of Seeyela’s methodical and precise work.

A Bamf, a pair of cuts, and then another Bamf, and she was in and out before the Enemy even knew she was there. Over and over, she suddenly appeared to drive her weapons home before vanishing to evade a devastating counter.

Hiral’s Frenzy reached two stacks, giving him a staggering 50% boost to his attack speed for thirty seconds just before Ever Changing+ expired. Letting go of the axes, he reached for the Emperor’s Greatsword over his shoulder, but the Chord of the Primal Echo finally reached his ears. Instead of drawing what was arguably his most powerful weapon, he instead let the Chord guide his solar energy to wrap his hands in Runes of Impact.

Cartwheeling over another tentacle—the Lost Echoexploding almost immediately—Hiral landed in the air and swept out a roundhouse kick. The mixed crescent of Expansion and Separation cut straight for the center of the squid’s mass, but four tentacles suddenly curved in to block the strike.

That’s the first blow it didn’t just try to tank. A weak…?

The pause in Hiral’s movements at the change in the squid’s behavior opened him up to the tree-like tentacle swinging right at him. Just in time, the Chord warned him of what was coming, but by then it was far too late to dodge. Rejection coated his arm a split second before impact, and the blow shot him sideways like a falling star. Another dome of Rejection saved him from splattering against a stone wall, instead sending him right through it.

“Hiral! You okay?” Seena asked over the party chat while Hiral pushed parts of the wall and ceiling off himself.

After a shake of his head, he used another dose of Rejection to completely clear the rubble. Regeneration+ was already going to work on the damage he’d taken, and he launched himself back out of the hole he’d made coming in. Regardless of whether the Enemy was surprised he was back so soon, or maybe just didn’t consider him a threat, Hiral lanced into its side and then hammered Impact-enhanced punches on it in time with the falling rain.

With only a few seconds left on Ever Changing+ before he needed to swap again, Hiral lifted his fist to focus his energy on the rune there and took quick stock of how the others were doing.

Tentacles whipped through the air to strike at the party members swarming it in close range, while blasts of Energy and Impact chased Seena around the periphery. With her Sheath of the Phoenix empowering her physical stats, not to mention her powerful shield and movement ability, the beast was having no luck locking her down.

Keep it up.

Hiral’s fist glowed with power, even the falling rain rebounding before it got within a foot of the corona. He waited one extra heartbeat, a tentacle sweeping in at him in the corner of his vision, and then the notes of the Chords chimed in tune.

WHAAAAAM! He hit with a punch that would’ve made Right proud, a rippling shockwave spreading from the blow at the same time the others struck. Seeyela drove both her daggers up to the hilts in the back of the Boss, while Right landed a punch mirroring Hiral’s directly opposite him. Seena, using an ability Hiral had never seen before, combined her four fireballs into a single lance of flame. A jerk of her arm sent the projectile cutting through the air, spinning like a drill. Instead of the usual explosion from her attacks, this lance of flame continued to bore into the Enemy.

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Finally, Left—though he took a sweeping blow that shattered both his legs—drove his dagger towards the central mass where the tentacles all met. Again, the beast brought appendages in to block the blow, but the timing and combined assault of the others only allowed one to get there. And if it thought the single arm would be enough to stop Left’s Dagger of Sath, it got a nasty surprise.

More than a hundred feet long, the twisting stream of hanging, infernal water wrapping around the Enemy like a ribbon caught up with the dagger in the blink of an eye. Then it exploded out the other side, and finally the squid made a noise.

Shrieking in pain with a sound like high-pitched, grinding stones, the Boss again used its sphere of Rejection to hurl the party back.

Hiral took a face-full of force-dome, the blow shooting him back to bounce along the road once, twice before he managed to right himself. Letting go of his Impact runes, he drew his RHCs in one quick motion and pulled both triggers. Of the others, only Seena was able to continue her ranged barrage, with Left, Right, and Seeyela hurled a solid forty feet away in an instant.

Back on the ground and not madly dodging around, Hiral pulled the triggers as soon as they were off cooldown and got a good look at the Enemy’s health bar. After all that, it was still above half.

Monster.

Another of Seena’s fiery lances struck true, driving into the thing’s meaty—though still invisible—side, and it finally seemed to have had enough. A second shriek, though this one of more rage than pain, and the tentacles swept down and converged beneath it, shooting the monster itself straight up. Reaching a hundred feet up in an instant, then two hundred, the thing stopped to hang in the sky.

Thunder boomed above while lightning arced through the dark clouds, the rain somehow coming down even harder. Out went the tentacles in a wide spread, and the familiar runes began to glow on the tips of them.

Seena did what she could to continue the assault, but two of the tentacles focused their attention in her direction, deftly blocking her attacks with a plane of Rejection. Since she could only attack from one direction—below—it was easy to predict and nullify her.

Hiral didn’t fare any better, his bolts slapping up against another shield when the Enemy dedicated a single tentacle to negating him.

Energy coalesced around the other seven limbs, building in power as several different runes formed at the tip of each one: Impact, Energy, and Separation. The Enemy would be attacking them with twenty-one different attacks.

I guess this makes it phase three. And if we aren’t careful, it’ll raze the whole town trying to kill us, probably killing Dr. Benza and the others in the process.

“I’m going,” Seeyela said, Bamf’ing to appear above the Enemy, then immediately needing to use the ability again to evade a barrage of attacks from two tentacles. All three runes on each limb seemed able to fire independently, showering the area where Seena had been with deadly energy.

Beams, bolts of force, and cutting arcs scored the air and followed Seeyela from position to position as she teleported across the sky in quick succession. As Hiral watched—still pulling his triggers the whole time—his high Atn spotted the tentacles moving before the woman reappeared. Somehow, it could track her through her teleportation. With most of its focus on her, she wasn’t able to use her greatest asset—her mobility—to get through and attack.

Green veins of venom vaguely stood out from the Enemy’s invisible skin, so her attacks were working—when they landed—but she’d need a lot more to be successful. And judging by the other five tentacles turning their attention on the party below, things were about to get a whole lot worse.

“Scatter!” Seena shouted, spotting the same thing, and she dashed down a side alley.

Hiral didn’t wait to see what the squid would do, also bolting behind one of the few buildings still standing. Not that the thick, stone walls meant to last thousands of years really did much. Brutal attacks of Energy, Separation, and Impact shredded the stone like wet paper, explosions of rock shards and force chasing Hiral as he sprinted away.

He dashed out across a small intersection—pulling each trigger once as he went—then straight through to another alley. The boooooms, schiiings, and zzzzztts of the Enemy’s attacks chased him the whole way, while his hearing picked out where the monster likewise took shots at his party.

“Don’t lead the blasts back toward Dr. Benza and the others,” Hiral said.

“Doing my best, but I’m barely keeping up here,” Seena replied.

“I’m not… making any… progress up here,” Seeyela added between Bamfs, frustration clear in her voice.

“Seena, that fiery drill thing you did, how powerful is it?” Hiral sheathed his RHCs on his thighs as he ran and grabbed his Runic Blunderbuss.

“Depends how much solar energy I can channel into it,” she replied. “I can keep feeding it fireballs until I’m empty. Not like this thing is going to give me a chance to do that, though.”

“Don’t worry about that part of it,” Hiral said.

More explosions tore out across the city as Seena said flatly, “Pretty worried about that part of it, actually.”

“Don’t be. Really. We’ve got you covered.” Hiral leapt out of the alley and skidded along a rooftop. A pull of his trigger sent an explosive blast at the squid, and he nodded as the same tentacle predictably came across to raise a shield of Rejection.

Same distance from the body every time—almost fifty feet.

Another barrage of attacks chased him from the top of the building, the poor thing crumbling to ruins behind him, but he paid it no real mind. One way or another, the fight would be over in a few minutes.

“It sounds to me… like Hiral has… one of his reckless… plans,” Seeyela said, still Bamf’ing around the squid. Despite her best efforts, she wasn’t able to get close to it on her own.

“I do,” Hiral said. “Listen closely. It’s time to fry this squid.”

“Can’t we just have the plan without the overly dramatic one-liners?” Seena asked.