Chương 161: Chapter 159: Preparing for the boss battle

"Should we move on, or take a few minutes to recharge everything?" I ask. I really hope they'll be down with taking a few minutes. Just, like, forty of them.

"We can rest for a bit," Ash says.

"Let things regenerate. I need to get some of my stamina back." We end up resting for twenty minutes. It's enough for me to meditate all my mana back, and for Ash to do this weird breathing thing that apparently makes stamina come back more quickly. I think its like a form of meditation; it certainly seems to do the same thing. I recast Shell in time for its cooldown to be over before we leave the room, and we are soon ready to move on, completely full on all of our various pools.

This dungeon is designed to be a marathon, not a sprint. I think. I don't know if it's designed by an intelligent force or if that's just the way it ended up, but it feels like the whole thing is meant to nickel and dime you out of your various resources. So it slows you down, it makes you use your stamina, it drains your health and your mana to make it through. But there are rooms where you can rest and recover, so maybe that's not the intention. Or maybe the intention is for people to have to stop and recover.

I wonder if anything changed ahead of us during the twenty minutes that we've been resting. It wasn't that long. Twenty minutes flies by pretty fast; there shouldn't have been much chance for things to change. But I guess we'll see. We go to the other end of the giant cathedral like room and start looking for more doors. There are two. One of them is off to the left hand side of the room and the size of a regular door. The other is a set of double doors about twice my height, right smack in the middle of the wall.

There are braziers on either side of the door, though they are empty and unlit. But the middle door itself is embellished with iron all through its wooden frame, and there is even a bass relief bisected by the doors that shows a huge rotund demon surrounded by treasures and flames.

"I bet that's the door to the boss." I don't think Gigi needed to say that out loud. It's pretty clearly the door to the boss. But maybe she's getting nervous.

"Let's go through the other door first." The other door is trapped. And I mean trapped to all hell. The floor in front of it is pock marked, the tell tale sign of acid. There are also angled holes on either side of the door that makes me think that there are spears that will come out and try to impale me when I open it. There's a needle under the handle, two more inside the lock, and from what I can tell, the door is closed on top of a pressure plate that will be released as soon as the door is opened.

Whatever is on the other side of this door must be important for someone to put that many traps on it. There are so many that my detect traps skill goes up to twelve just for investigating the door. But I think I may have found them all. Wait; there's also a piece of metal at the top of the door frame. Maybe it's forming a closed circuit with the wall. That's another trap that will definitely go off when I open the door.

"Everyone stand back," I say as I get to work. I bend the needles out of the way, breaking the one on the handle of the door, and I get to work picking the lock. While I do so, I find a wire inside the lock that almost snaps as soon as I touch it with the lock pick. I have to work carefully to get around the thin wire, and sweat is rolling down my back as I manage to finally trip the lock. My Pick Lock skill goes up to 18, and I take a deep breath, holding the handle gingerly in my hand.

In one movement, I throw the door open and leap to the side. Sure enough, six spears come shooting out of the sides of the door, three on each side, crossing each other in front of the door. At the same time, a spray of acid comes down from the top of the door frame, and there is a blast of magical energy that engulfs the space between the spears. All those things going off at once would probably have done a tremendous amount of damage.

But as I managed to get away, and everyone else was standing well back, we get through the door unscathed. On the other side of the door is a long passageway with rays of light crossing it. I think back to the movies with light beams as the triggers for traps, but this doesn't seem like that. These beams are all at the same height, and it would be stupidly easy to walk down the corridor without breaking any of the beams. More to the point, the beams all come in pairs. I think these are spy holes.

Just in case, I fire an arrow to break several of the beams. The arrow soars harmlessly through them, and nothing happens. I move to the first one and break the beam for a few seconds, tensed and ready to dodge. But nothing continues to happen. Then I put my eyes up to the holes, having to go up on my toes to be able to do it. Looking through, I see a room full of treasure. There are stacks of coins, piles of gems, and even a full shelf of books. But there's more than treasure in there.

Like the bass relief suggested, there is a demon in there. And it is huge. We've fought bigger things. The beach guardian was bigger, at least in terms of physical size. This demon is only about fifteen feet tall, though he seems to be sitting down. And it's definitely a he. Well, I can't be sure that he identifies that way, but anatomically, it's definitely a he. He's not wearing clothes, and his privates are hanging out. They are massive.

I don't really feel inadequate – not really my thing – but I do feel a little bit impressed. Even taking his height into account, that thing is massive. I let my eyes move away from his monster and look him more up and down. He is fat. Just rolls and rolls of flesh cascading down his form. Arms as thick as tree trunks, if this guy can move his body at all, he's going to be really strong. He'd have to be. Fifteen feet tall, he must weigh at least two tons. Maybe more.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. He's not alone, either. Surrounding him are beautiful women. Some of them are fanning him with giant fans that appear to be made of steel and look like they would double as a weapon pretty easily. The women all have skin the color of fire, and their horns and tails mark them as demons. But there are more than the half dozen or so women fanning the demon.

There are also a bunch of smaller demons running around the room. I try to get a good look at all of them, and soon have the three types of monsters identified. Impling. Very rare elite demon, level 44. HP: 22, 000/22, 000 Succubus. Rare special demon, level 48. HP: 48, 000/48, 000. Glutton Lord. Legendary rare elite demon, level 60. HP: 300, 000/300, 000. I move away from the spy holes and back to the main room, then bring the others far away from the door so we can make plans.

"Mab's Rage will take out the implings," I say.

"But not the succubi."

"How many of each are there?" Ash asks.

"Maybe a dozen implings, six succubi, and one glutton lord." Ash nods.

"That's kind of to be expected. This is not going to be easy."

"They're probably all immune to fire," Gigi says.

"But hopefully not to ice as well." I hadn't even considered that they might be immune to Mab's Rage. That would make things so much worse. I hope that's not the case.

"What's the plan?" El asks, looking at Ash, then glancing at me. It is usually one of use that comes up with the plan. Ash just shrugs.

"I'm working on it," she says.

"What if we lure them out?" I ask.

"I'm not sure the glutton lord even can move. What if we open the door and move back into this room, make them come to us. Even if not all of them take the bait, we can wipe out at least a few of them, even the odds a bit."

"What if they have ranged attacks and just start attacking us from the safety of their room?" Gigi asks.

"We move off to the side, and make them chase us," I say.

"Though if we move off to the side, we can't attack them back. Mab's Rage should still be effective, though. It has a range of one hundred and thirty feet." That should be enough to completely fill that other room, but only if I stand at the edge of this one.

"Once they split up, we take out the group that comes to us," Ash says.

"Then we move together towards the remainder and take them out." Everyone nods.

"Minions first," Ash says.

"We'll deal with the glutton lord together, but let's make sure that the minions are all dead before we do. So ignore him as best you can while you take out the succubi and the implings." That makes sense. It's going to take the longest time and the most concentrated force to take out the glutton lord. If we attack him while the minions are still alive, we'll have to constantly deal with their attacks. We need to be able to concentrate on the boss, and that means ignoring him at first.

It's a decent strategy; works in most games. The only time it doesn't work is when the boss constantly spawns new monsters.

"If the boss spawns new monsters, do we switch tactics?" I ask.

"Good point," Ash says. She bites her lip, but gently, not drawing blood.

"We wipe out the minions first. If the boss spawns more, then Gigi and Caleb deal with the minions while Ash and I deal with the boss. Join in on the boss when you can, split off again when he spawns more minions." Okay. We have a plan. We just need to wait another sixteen minutes before we implement it. Sixteen minutes is a long time to wait when you know that there's a fight coming. It's stressful to just stand here, weapons in hand, and not engage the enemy. Who knows what they're doing?

I go back into the little tunnel and check on them again. They seem to just be hanging out, doing their own thing. The six succubi are waving their metal fans, the implings are lounging around. I see one impling pick up a huge gemstone and take a bite out of it like an apple. That's not good. They might eat all the treasure if we wait too long! No. Calm down. They're not going to eat everything. If they were going to do that, if there was a risk of that, they'd probably already have done it by now.

They may eat the gems, but they clearly don't eat a lot of them. There are fifteen implings in there, and they aren't all eating gems. We've got time. And besides, there's plenty of other treasure in there. Even still, we don't end up waiting the full sixteen minutes. When the cooldown has dropped below two minutes, I signal that I'm ready to go. El grabs the rings on the giant double doors and pulls them both open.

I bet she looks badass from inside there, tossing the doors aside with a certain level of arrogance and just general coolness. She then steps back, pulling out a javelin, and throws it at the demons. The demons don't come charging out all at once. I shoot a Rapid Shot at one of the implings, followed by a Power Shot at one of the succubi. The damage is what I expect, which makes me happy. They don't have special armor, and they both seem to bleed. Gigi shoots in with her bow, and Ash shoots with hers.

Soon we have a nice barrage of arrows going into the room. And a small barrage of Fire Bolts coming out of it. One of them hits me square in the chest. It only does 18 damage. Looking at the others, it doesn't seem like the magic does all that much damage to them, either. We all have pretty high magic resistance. And Ash and I both cut damage from fire in half. The glutton lord gurgles.

"Kill them for me, I'm hungry." He says. It kind of hurts my ears to understand what he's saying. Must be a demon language. He raises a huge flabby arm and points a claw at us. A blast of magic comes out of his pointed finger. I step forward to make sure that I'm the one it hits, and it almost staggers me back with the force of it. Even with my magic resistance, it still does 250 damage. Still not that much, but impressive nonetheless. The implings come charging out first, but the succubi aren't far behind.

I keep shooting, stepping back a few paces as I do. Ash and Gigi are switching their weapons, and El steps in front of me with her axes, ready for the charge of the little creatures. They break against her like a wave, crashing all around her. She sweeps back and forth, keeping four of them occupied with her attacks, but the other eleven of them swarm past her. Four of them move to attack Gigi, four of them to attack El, and the last three come after me. I check the timer. Still have fifty three seconds.

I continue to backpedal, using my bow to keep them at bay as best I can. There are only three of them, and they aren't very fast, but I can't keep shooting them forever. I need a little bit of space so that I can get my bow away and my sword and dagger out. My bow skill goes up to forty two as I keep shooting. I'm shooting incredibly fast, barely taking the time to aim. Implings aren't very big, but I manage to keep hitting them anyway. Then they're right up close to me, and I have no choice but to switch weapons.

I get hit by all three of them as I'm doing it. But they only do 103 damage each. It's not much, but it will add up sooner or later.