Chương 50: 1-49 The Warden

Josef had never intended to find out how it would feel to go down an entirely dry slide made of more or less natural stone, but here he was, descending rapidly through the dark with a screaming knight right by his side. Well, he couldn't exactly blame her for that, considering he wasn't all that quiet himself. However, he had the excuse of totally exposed elbows burning from friction, instead of wearing protective metal armor.

His Regeneration was probably dealing with the damage just fine, but that didn't block out the painful sensation he was experiencing. At least their impromptu trip didn't last overly long before it abruptly ended at a chute. The force at which they hurtled out was enough to send them flying far enough to clear a sewage canal underneath. Though in Linda's case, it was only barely so, thanks to the added weight of her equipment.

Rolling along the ground until his momentum had bled off, Josef rose shakily, almost heaving from the disorienting experience. The sight that awaited him wasn't the usual lengthy corridor, but a massive hexagonal room framed by canals of liquid that had abandoned all pretense of being regular sewage, as their color was a sickly bright green.

Solid walkways bordered these channels of liquid, one of which the two of them had landed on, and only at six points, aligning with the corners of the room, did these paths cut off to allow fluid to run towards the center. A center which was shaped like a massive bowl, over a hundred meters in length and possibly dozens deep, though the accumulated liquid made it hard to gauge its actual dimensions. This definitely wasn't the 19th floor.

When an angry elf stormed her way over to him, sputtering under the force of the insults trying to break out of her mouth, he simply raised his palm in a stopping gesture and pointed the other to the center of the room.

"We're on the boss floor." There was no need for Josef to say more. If it weren't for the helmet on her head, he knew he would have seen her face pale from shock, going by the way her body stopped as if it had hit a wall.

"What? How? That can't be!" Linda started loudly and still increased the volume with every word.

"We can't be here. I can't be here. Not without Aifreed!" The shock of this development had hit her harder than Josef could have imagined, but there was no way but forward, if the message ploughing its way into his consciousness was any indicator.

✡︎□︎◆︎❒︎ ◻︎❒︎♏︎⬧︎♏︎■︎♍︎♏︎ ♎︎♏︎♐︎♓︎●︎♏︎♎︎ □︎◆︎❒︎ ♒︎♋︎●︎●︎⬧︎📬︎ ☠︎□︎⬥︎📪︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎ ⬥︎♋︎❒︎♎︎♏︎■︎ ♒︎♋︎⬧︎ ♋︎⬥︎□︎🙵♏︎■︎📬︎ 👌︎︎♏︎︎♑︎︎□︎︎■︎︎♏︎︎ ♐︎︎❒︎︎□︎︎❍︎︎ ⧫︎︎♒︎︎♏︎︎⬧︎︎♏︎︎ ♒︎︎♋︎︎●︎︎●︎︎⬧︎︎📪︎︎ ♐︎︎□︎︎◆︎︎●︎︎ ♓︎︎■︎︎⧫︎︎❒︎︎◆︎︎♎︎︎♏︎︎❒︎︎📬︎︎"Listen, Linda, we have to-" he didn't get further than that before the woman turned and screamed at him.

"This is all your fault!" she breathed heavily before continuing.

"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be-" He barely had to raise his voice, because his tone did the heavy lifting for him.

"Alive. No, you'd be very much dead and forgotten, just like those knights wanted for you. So shut up, draw your sword, and get ready. Or at least stay out of the way while I take down the boss." He really hoped he could do so, because whatever was coming for them was going to be worse than the two royal slimes. And this time, there was no Cana he could rely on, only himself. Could he really do this alone, though?

Before he could waver under the weight of his own doubts, a reassuring presence settled on his shoulder, announcing the return of his very first companion. Even their sudden descent wasn't enough to leave behind Dusty, who had apparently kept up through his own means. On top of that, there was another wave of comfort radiating through his body as Pretzel slithered her way out of his chest to rejoin him. He wasn't so alone after all. Hopefully, they would be enough for whatever was coming at them.

The boss was very large, as the rising liquid in the middle of the room showed them, because it lifted higher and higher, never once breaking up enough to show whatever creature was hidden inside it. As the mass of green writhed and moved, Josef had to quickly revise his own estimate about the monster in front of him, because it hadn't been submerged in the sewage at all. It was the sewage.

Filth Elemental: Warden of Pestilence - Level 36 The massive mound of green began to churn and bubble more violently as two appendages separated from the central mass. It was growing arms, and Josef doubted those were intended for shaking hands. How were they even supposed to injure a creature like that? Maybe if Zippa was with them, he could try to evaporate the monster, or at least dry it until it was solid enough to break apart.

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option, and he couldn't imagine water having any kind of use in this fight, unless there was an option to flush it down a drain. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. If he had taken that ability that allowed his waters to cleanse things, the story might have been different, but that was neither here nor there. Could Mana Drain take this thing apart, like it did with the royal slimes?

It was the most feasible option he could think of, but that didn't mean much if all else seemed useless from the start. Even if it had a weakness for that spell, as its body suggested, the sheer difference in size made the task unrealistic. How much would he have to drain before it had any noticeable effect? Josef would try it if he had to, but he didn't fancy his chances of succeeding before ending up digested inside that horribly rank mixture.

There was no more time to think, as the elemental took its first swing, an arm the size of a small bus coming at them with deceptively low speed. Even if the attack wasn't the fastest, the size of the appendage made it difficult to evade, and the force behind it was without a doubt catastrophic. Fortunately, his Dexterity was more than up for the task, allowing him to sprint clear of the impact zone without even getting close to touching the ruinous limb.

The same couldn't be said for Linda, who had barely managed to get away after being forced to come out of her shock, throwing herself forward tumbling for several meters after getting clipped during her evasive maneuver.

"You good?" He shouted over, as they had both moved in different directions, preparing to move her way if she needed treatment.

"Yes!" she replied, her voice carrying a wince as she got up and righted herself. Thus began their game of cat and mouse, as both of them continuously dodged the incoming swings, searching for means to harm it back. Fortunately, after she had overcome the initial surprise, the elf stayed on her toes, escaping the monster's attacks by a more sizable margin.

Pretzel had slithered off Josef and began her own retaliation against the boss monster, though her efforts amounted to little, as it possessed neither bones she could crush nor lungs she could drown. All she could do was launch water, which barely washed some grime away on impact, or bite it ferociously, tearing away small chunks before heaving violently at the taste. At least that was more than Dusty could do, who once again vanished after his first futile bite.

Taking the opening left after each swing, Linda would turn around and cleave into the green semi-solid with wild abandon, carving away chunks of its body whenever she had the chance. When it came to pure mass, she definitely did more damage to the elemental than Josef could, though all of her efforts quickly proved to be futile. Whatever pieces she cut off from the creature simply melted down, flowing either back into the channels surrounding the chamber, or straight back down the bowl to rejoin the monster.

Relying on his magic to drain the mana straight out of the creature, Josef's progress was much slower, but seemingly more permanent. He took every chance he got to get a grip on the appendage aiming for him and sucked out as much as he could. Whatever parts he grabbed thus quickly turned a darker shade, before its edges began to crumple away into black dust.

Unfortunately, there was very little of the stuff spread out on the ground, showing how little progress he had made compared to the massive amount of angry green pudding still in front of him. Continuing at this pace might just take days, and no matter how much he could heal, it was never going to get him past the eventual exhaustion.

And that didn't even factor in how he had to get rid of all the mana he absorbed, shoving it down the links of his familiars, all while large amounts of it got violently ejected out of his body whenever he was overly full. Concerning pure capacity, this monster was leagues above him, as if he were a candle trying to outshine a raging wildfire.

He also didn't know of whatever mana they ended up sending back into the dungeon's atmosphere wasn't going to end up back with the creature, in which case his efforts would also end up being completely useless. Unless, of course, if he could drain it dead before that mana regeneration had a chance to undo his work. With how things were currently going, that wasn't going to happen without some massive breakthrough. Which meant that it was time to come up with a Plan B.

As luck, if you wanted to call it that, would have it, Josef had actually gotten a personal taste of what type of attack could put the fear in someone who could heal themselves to a ridiculous degree. He was thinking of the ice magic one of the knights had used against him, threatening to encase him in the frosty element, turning all of his healing spells useless. If he could somehow figure out how to use that element himself, then maybe he could try to freeze the creature.

Sadly, he had no idea how to do that, as he had only relied on the affinities he had started with so far. However, with nothing to do but dance around the creature's strikes, he had all the time in the world to figure out how to make this work. Well, until his body gave out from exhaustion, that was. Pulling the staff he had once stowed away out of his hoard, he looked over the metal rod, wondering how to begin.

With little else to do, he reached out with his own mana, carefully pushing a tendril of energy into the weapon. Something he quickly regretted, as a sharp and painful cold bit back at him, as ice seemed to flood into his own veins. Breaking the connection, this cold energy quickly dispersed under the deluge of his own mana, leaving behind nothing but goosebumps that had formed on his skin.

This was how Josef learned in one try that any unaligned energy entering the staff would quickly be transformed, and that the effect could even spread back into his own body. Could he possibly figure out how to use ice by introducing more of that into his body? What if he gave his heartstone some of that mana to chew? If he tried that, what's the worst that could happen?

Submerged in his own speculations, barely sparing half a brain to dodge the next impact of those humongous green fists, Josef almost didn't notice when something about the creature's attack pattern changed. And even though he did, his reaction was still a step too slow to get out of harm's way. This time, after bringing down one of its appendages, the elemental didn't pull it back immediately, leaving it stuck to the walkway and completely blocking it in one direction.

Then the other limb, which had also remained on the ground, began moving clockwise, pursuing the shortest path to meet up with the other arm. Linda was fortunate enough not to be on the route which this attack paved with utter destruction, but Josef wasn't quite so lucky. Caught off guard, he had little time to make a decision, as the incoming limb threatened to squash him like an insect, the comparison holding up scarily well with the size difference involved.

Too late to make the dive into either the bowl which housed the monster, or the sickly green stream that would drain into the former, he had only one choice. He would have to brave the blow and recover afterwards. If he survived the impact, that was. Desperately flooding his body with earth mana, he held the staff by his side like a spear, facing the incoming doom with gritted teeth. This was going to hurt.