Chương 92: The Depthscale Tyrant (Part 3)

I have a plan. This is generally considered a bad sign. Whether it is a bad sign for us or the Tyrant remains to be seen. Personally, I am hoping for the Tyrant. I speak up.

"Rin. You said you could have hypothetically frozen that earlier attack, correct?" He nods.

"Yeah." I tilt my head slightly.

"Am I correct in assuming that means you possess a powerful singular attack?" He blinks, then nods again.

"Yeah. Although if I use it, I'll lose all my momentum stacks." A painful sacrifice. An acceptable one. I turn toward our resident fire mage, who has been… Marginally useful throughout this cave trip.

"What about you?" Zeke immediately nods.

"I do. Costs a ridiculous amount of mana though."

"Any cast time?"

"About ten seconds." Perfect.

"Excellent." I point at the Tyrant.

"I need both of you to hit that thing." Rin raises an eyebrow.

"The same spot. Rin first. Zeke second." The Catkin tilts his head. Then realization dawns.

"Ah." A grin spreads across his face.

"Thermal shock. You're going to try and punch through the mana armor." My tail flicks in equal parts satisfaction and professional offense.

"I am not 'trying' anything." A flick of my fingers sends Astra Nocturne dissolving back into my soul. Then I stretch out my hand. A harpoon begins to form. Large. Then larger. Then highly concerning. Layer upon layer of unstable runes crawl across its surface as starlight condenses into crystalline form. Enhancement loops connect to gates with no triggers. Flow channels terminate into nothing. Entire sections lack anything resembling an equalizer rune.

Half-finished versions of every runic sequence I have ever memorized twist together across the weapon's surface, assembled into a chaotic masterpiece that can only be described as a personal attack against the profession of runesmithing. Modern art.

"I am going to succeed." Rin's grin immediately becomes slightly unhinged. Excellent. He launches forward. The Catkin races across the lake, frostflame freezing a path beneath his feet as he accelerates toward the Tyrant. Behind me, the air begins to heat. Then it heats some more, the temperature rising so quickly that the cavern's airflow changes entirely. Absolute cold and unbearable heat begin fighting for dominance within the same space. The Tyrant finally realizes that something is happening. Its eyes narrow.

The lake starts to move again. I ignore it. The harpoon is not finished. My attention remains entirely focused on the increasingly concerning amount of unstable runes currently being attached to the weapon. Zeke's voice rings through the cavern.

"Mind the count! Five seconds!" Rin reaches the Tyrant.

"Four!" The serpent finally decides it has waited long enough, its jaws snapping downward with enough force to split a building in half. Rin vanishes in a burst of Frostflame, and the bite closes on empty air.

"Three!" The Catkin reappears several dozen meters below the Tyrant's head, standing atop its neck. He plants both sabers downward, and the tips intersect directly above the mana armor. Every scrap of Frostflame surrounding his body rushes inward, the enormous aura collapsing into a single point. A pale-blue sphere forms between the crossed blades. The light is painful to look at.

"Two!" Golden radiance settles over him as Avelyn's Blessing takes hold. The sphere brightens further. Frost spreads across the Tyrant's scales. Across the water. Across the air itself. Rin grins widely. The expression of a man about to commit violence in a highly artistic manner.

"Winter's End." For a single suspended instant, nothing happens. Then the cavern freezes. The pale-blue sphere detonates outward into the Tyrant's neck, expanding in a crescent of absolute cold. Frost erupts across the mana armor, the chill penetrating beyond the shimmering barrier and into the scales beneath. The Tyrant roars. Actually roars. The sound shakes the cavern. A massive section of its neck frosts over instantly, blue-green scales turning white as ice crawls across them with alarming speed.

Then the cracks begin. Scale fractures. Flesh splits. The simple act of moving becomes enough to tear apart tissue frozen beyond its limits. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The lake suffers as collateral damage. A vast patch of water flash-freezes beyond the impact site, forming a rapidly expanding glacier that spreads across the surface.

"One!" Rin vanishes in a burst of Frostflame. A wise decision. I begin moving. The final runes settle into place across my harpoon as I sprint across the water, each step sending sprays into the air behind me. Golden light envelops both me and Zeke. Avelyn's Blessing. Excellent timing. I accelerate further. The cavern grows hotter, and the glacier begins to crack. Then Zeke finishes his cast.

"Pyroclasm!" A beam of incandescent flame tears through the cavern. The attack strikes the exact location Rin targeted. The resulting explosion is violent enough to make the previous impacts seem restrained. Fire blossoms across the Tyrant's neck, and the frozen scales promptly undergo a dramatic disagreement with the concept of structural integrity. They shatter. Entire sections of armor explode outward in glittering fragments.

The Tyrant's head jerks sideways as the blast slams into it, the colossal serpent nearly collapsing into the lake from the force alone. Good aim. Six out of ten. Points deducted for being noticeably weaker than Rin's attack. The exposed area is enormous. Scale is gone. The flesh beneath is cracked, burned, and visibly damaged. The mana armor remains. Technically. The shimmering barrier has dulled significantly, fractures running through its surface like cracks through glass. It is heavily weakened.

Not broken, but close enough. My foot lands atop a crystal island. Gravity drops to its minimum, and I jump. My vines slap the island, adding to my momentum. The island explodes beneath me. I soar high above the battlefield, the Tyrant's exposed wound laid bare in front of me. The harpoon leaves my hand. A vine immediately catches it. I continue rising. Higher. Higher still. The Tyrant notices me. Too late. My grin becomes slightly feral. My tail flicks, and I twist. The vine twists with me. The harpoon follows.

The weapon traces a massive arc through the air as the vine extends to its absolute limit, accelerating faster and faster with every meter of movement. I begin to pour Astral Energy into it to kickstart the reaction. The unstable runes begin to glow. Light pours from every line etched into the weapon. Enhancement loops feed into broken gates. Half-finished sequences fight each other for dominance. The entire construct exists in a state best described as extremely temporary.

A runesmith witnessing it would likely suffer emotional damage. The harpoon reaches the apex of its arc. Its tip accelerates to absurd velocity as the whip effect compounds upon itself. At that exact moment, I activate Horizon Release. Every stack stored within my anklet vanishes, and power floods through me. The vine snaps forward, and I release. The harpoon vanishes. The weakened mana armor caves inward, then ruptures as the harpoon punches through the fractured barrier and plunges deep into the Tyrant's neck.

The serpent cannot dodge. It cannot react. It cannot even flinch. The attack is simply there. One moment, the space between us is empty. The next, a massive harpoon is buried deep within its flesh. Not even my eyes are capable of tracking the projectile's path. The sound arrives a heartbeat later. A ring of compressed air detonates across the cavern. The lake depresses beneath the harpoon's flight path. Crystal islands shatter. And the Tyrant finally realizes it has been hit. It roars. The sound rattles the cavern.

My construct buries deeper into its flesh as the delayed shockwave tears through the surrounding tissue, blasting scales, blood, and chunks of meat outward from the entry wound. My vine snaps taut. Pain lances through my shoulder as recoil nearly dislocates the joint and drags me sideways through the air. I ignore it. Instead, two more vines erupt from my thighs and anchor themselves to a nearby stalactite, before yanking me backward. A moment later I land lightly beside the group.

A pulse of golden light immediately washes over me. The pain vanishes. Avelyn. Helpful. Rin arrives a second later, finally able to approach now that his Frostflame aura has faded. Zeke follows shortly afterward, relocating away from the small patch of molten rock currently occupying his previous position. Avelyn looks at me. Concerned.

"So... that was really incredible, but..." She points her staff toward the Tyrant. The serpent is no longer reeling. No longer staggering. No longer showing any signs of immediate collapse. Instead, it is glaring at us with an amount of rage that borders on inspirational. I nod solemnly. That appears to have really upset it.

"It seems to still be alive?" I nod again.

"An astute observation." Avelyn blinks.

"... Is this still part of the plan?" I place a finger against my chin. The gesture fails to reassure anyone. Interesting. The Tyrant's mana circulation is significantly stronger than the dragon's had been. The construct is also substantially larger. I perform a quick estimate. Twenty-five seconds. Perhaps thirty. The lake begins to move. Everyone tenses. Avelyn raises her staff. Zeke mutters something deeply unflattering about aquatic reptiles. Marek exhales and repositions his shield. The Tyrant begins advancing.

Massive waves crash over nearby islands as its colossal body cuts through the water. My internal clock continues counting. Twenty seconds. Fifteen. Ten. The serpent accelerates. The water rises around it. Five. I immediately grab Avelyn and Sylrae by the wrists. Both women make startled noises as I drag them behind Marek. They comply. Mostly because resisting would be difficult. Marek glances over his shoulder. Confused. I simply smile. Then— BOOM. The harpoon reaches critical saturation.

Twenty-seven seconds of continuous mana absorption. Twenty-seven seconds of compressing stolen energy into a space that was never designed to contain it. Twenty-seven seconds of building pressure inside a creature the size of a natural disaster. And it most certainly does not fail gracefully. The Tyrant's neck explodes. The entire section of flesh surrounding the embedded harpoon simply ceases to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with standard biology. An explosion dozens of meters wide erupts outward.

Scales the size of wagons launch into the sky like artillery shells. Entire slabs of flesh detach and achieve temporary flight. Blood follows. An absolutely unreasonable amount of blood. The lake beneath the Tyrant briefly gains a second lake directly above it. The shockwave tears through the surrounding tissue, turning muscle, organs, arteries, tendons, and whatever horrifying biological nonsense giant magical sea serpents keep inside themselves into a highly pressurized mist.

The resulting explosion punches clean through the opposite side of the neck. For one deeply confusing moment, daylight appears. There is no daylight. There is simply enough Tyrant missing that I can see the lumescent cavern wall far behind it. The head remains attached for approximately one second. A truly inspiring display of optimism. Then several hundred tons of serpent anatomy finally receive updated information regarding the current state of the neck. The head separates. Gravity immediately takes custody.

The Tyrant's expression remains frozen somewhere between rage, confusion, and the realization that perhaps allowing the tiny fox girl to build a suspiciously glowing harpoon was a tactical error. Then the head hits the lake. The impact generates a wave large enough to qualify as local weather. The rest of the body follows shortly afterward. Meanwhile, the explosion has created a secondary problem. Namely: Everything. Everywhere. All at once.

A wall of blood, pulverized scales, shredded flesh, liquefied organs, and fragments of what were almost certainly important internal components races toward us at impressive speed. And tragically, Bulwark can only block magical attacks. Marek is baptized. Not splashed or covered. Baptized. Several hundred pounds of Depthscale Tyrant arrive all at once and introduce themselves to the Bearkin at alarming velocity. Zeke swears as he receives approximately fifty pounds of serpent.

One particularly ambitious chunk ricochets off his shoulder before exploding into several smaller chunks against the ground. Rin becomes significantly more red. Which is impressive considering the sheer quantity of red already present in the immediate area. Meanwhile, behind our convenient shield, me, Avelyn, and Sylrae remain completely spotless. Experience is a wonderful teacher. The gore storm continues for several more seconds. Blood rains from the cavern ceiling. Chunks of serpent splash into the lake.

Something large lands somewhere in the distance with a wet impact powerful enough to send up a spray of crimson water. I choose not to investigate. Then, finally, it ends. Silence settles across the cavern. The lake churns violently. The Tyrant floats motionless. Something squishy slides off Marek's shoulder and lands in front of him with a sound that can only be described as offensive to my ears.

Zeke stares at a piece of serpent anatomy slowly descending his chest and quietly decides that identifying it would be a mistake. An unidentifiable organ roughly the size of a carriage crashes into the lake a few hundred meters away, reminding everyone exactly how large the Tyrant had been. Avelyn makes a noise. Sylrae makes a different noise. My tail flicks smugly. All according to plan. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ You have slain Depthscale Tyrant (Level 65 | Tier 2).

A slight experience bonus has been awarded for slaying a monster 4 levels above you. Your race has leveled up to level 62. Your class has leveled up to level 62. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Mini-Boss: Depthscale Tyrant has been defeated. A treasure chest has spawned. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Another level. Excellent. The party turns to look at me. Some appear mildly offended that I neglected to warn them about the incoming gore hurricane.

Avelyn looks like she might start worshipping me. Concerning. Sylrae utterly fails to suppress a laugh as she observes the state of our party's male population. Marek, who received the least collateral damage thanks to his shield, sighs deeply. The other two join him shortly afterward. Solidarity.

"I would recommend a purification." I gesture vaguely toward the golden Foxkin currently staring at me with sparkles in her eyes. The three men stare at me. Then at each other. Then at Avelyn, who is currently far too distracted with more important things to purify them. The collective sigh that follows carries the weight of profound suffering. My ears twitch in amusement.