There was no time to rest or recover; these waves of monsters were becoming a problem. We were over the halfway mark, though, over the hump. Supposedly. Past experience stated quite clearly that things would only get worse from here. I settled in, staring once again at the tunnel on the far side of the chamber that, in a way, had been the source of all our problems for the last little while.
We didn't wait long for the next wave to arrive, as a horde that was made up of everything we had fought so far came marching out of the tunnel. There were Akhlut adults and juveniles, Ice wraiths and even Rimebound revenants. Though thankfully, at least these revenants lacked the [Deathless] Skill. Which seemed odd, but I wasn't about to question that small bit of good fortune while we stared down another horde of monsters. There was little enough of that to go around as it was, though admittedly the familiar thrill of excitement was still running up my spine even as we risked death. A death that felt all too real after the loss of Felix. The hunger. I was closing in on yet another level and my own level 30 threshold, which would let me access another Class Skill. An advantage I desperately wanted.
Vipera made her appearance, slithering down one of my legs like a tree to reach the ground. The team's eyes flickered to my familiar for a brief moment before focusing back on the approaching horde of enemies. Her excitement mirrored the streak of my own running through my mind and singing in my blood. I was tired of being hemmed in and pressed by each new wave of monsters that entered the chamber. It was time to push back.
Hard.
Rather than wait for the horde to come to us this time, I launched myself forward, covering the gap in an instant. I became a furious blur of sharp, slashing legs and piercing fangs as I smashed into the swarm of monsters. The extra mass afforded to me by my spider form was not just for show; it was another advantage I could make use of.
Everywhere my sight fell, [Bane] followed, ripping into the monsters with unmatched ferocity, gutting Akhlut, and crushing wraiths. Green lighting blasted monsters around me as I mowed through the horde, and I soon found the edges thinning as Angus and Kels joined me in the melee.
Wave four rapidly became a bloodbath, one that I enjoyed down to my core, but it was a close-run thing. When the monsters came together like that, their assorted Skills worked in tandem in ways I could have written papers about—if I lived long enough. Wraiths would phase in to harass our flanks, forcing me to pivot and defend, while the Akhlut went all-in on bull-rushing, intent on bowling me over and letting the revenants hack at anything that got pinned. Every time I managed to crush a wraith in my legs, or eviscerate a couple of orca-wolves, one of the bastards would sucker punch me with its freezing breath or a shot of ice right in the joints. The cold seeped deeper, threatening to slow my spider form to a crawl.
It wasn't all bad, however, for all my recklessness diving headfirst into the horde, I was making a great deal of headway. [Gaze of Bane] was doing its job beautifully, or perhaps horrifically. Dozens of monsters screamed and writhed at a time as the venomous stacks of [Bane] did their work. It helped thin out the horde, and those it couldn't cull outright, it certainly did damage to. Meanwhile, physically, I was like a meat grinder shredding everything that strayed within reach of my limbs. Angus and Kels were careful to stay out of my reach even as they moved into assist me, weapons rising and falling in the swarm.
Gouts of fire washed over my chitin armour, and I cast a glance at Signe, and then at my limbs. A significant amount of the ice that had begun to slow my limbs had vanished under Signe's flames. It was a pity she couldn't do the same for herself and the other, but flesh and flame didn't agree with each other much. A hiss of approval escaped me before I returned my attention to the battle.
Minutes later, we all shared a look, we were tired, ragged and chilled to the bone, but victorious. Ever growing piles of corpses from the previous waves littered the chamber, black stone and pale blue ice were equally coated in the red of the slaughter. There was going to be a lot of loot for [Spirit Forge] after we were done here.
There was just one wave left now; all we waited for was confirmation from the System.
I braced myself, legs steadying in the slick slush of monster aftermath. Vipera curled around my front left leg, tongue flicking at the frost before she tensed, ready to spring. Beside me, Angus shook beads of freezing blood from his hammer, and Signe’s eyes darted over the chamber’s perimeter, already sparking with nervous premonition. Kels stood, shield raised, his face set in lines so harsh it looked carved from the rock itself. We all saw what the notification said. We all knew something nasty was coming.
It began with the sound of Ice grinding together, like glaciers grinding past one another as they passed in the night. Echoing out like some sort of grating melody from the tunnel where each wave had emerged from previously. What came slithering out of that tunnel was not something that belonged here; it was something that had been changed to match the environment it was in.
The serpentine body of the naga reared up, lifting its humanoid half into the air as it exited the confines of the tunnel, more than a dozen feet of wide, blue-scaled serpent body following behind it. Its blue scales glittered with frost as it moved into the pale light of the chamber, the scales on its belly a light, almost white blue in contrast with the sapphire scales that covered the rest of the monster. This was not a lamia; there was no soft human skin on this beast, and while its upper half was humanoid, it was distinctly inhuman. Scales covered its torso and arms, leading up to a cobra's hood flared wide around a serpentine snout. In one of its clawed hand it carried what I realized was a staff, one that looked almost like a spike of black ice. If it weren't for the gleaming blue crystal at the top of it, I wouldn't have realized what it was.
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On instinct, I triggered [Analyze], and for the first time in memory, felt some resistance as the combination of my Perception and Charisma worked to batter down the boss's resistance.
Ah, the illusion of choice.
There really wasn't a choice here as far as I was concerned. It was the choice of a Rare Skill versus an Uncommon one. It helped that I needed the information it would provide either way. It was interesting that the System took into account things I didn't realize I was doing, however. I'd been using my charisma to batter aside resistance to my information gathering for a while without realizing that was what I was actually doing. I had been thinking of it as a separate process rather than a part of using [Analyze]. Either way, I wasn't going to turn down the upgrade.
It didn't read like much of an upgrade. Not at face value. Not notifying the target if I failed was an upgrade, though, and much more importantly, I could utilize my high Charisma directly against anything I wanted to use this new Skill on. Up until now, I had been using my Charisma to prevent resistance to the Skill; now I could use it to penetrate defences directly. The newly evolved Skill activated in place of the old [Analyze], and I felt it punch right through whatever resistance the Boss put up.
Interestingly, the new Skill provided me with a brief summary of what the target's Skills did. I could tell that they were more like summaries rather than exactly what the System would say. I suppose that was meant to be the Insight part of the Skill. It was irrelevant that there was a lot to be concerned about in that stat sheet, not the least of which was this monster's level. Kels and the others had been growing stronger as we battled through the dungeon, picking up a few levels and drawing closer to my own level, but this was several levels above me as well.
More concerning this was the first monster I had ever encountered that was probably smarter than I was. At least it had the capacity to be the damn thing was a mage of some sort, at any rate.
I was yanked roughly from my musing as the Naga waved its staff in the air, and a dozen lances of ice formed in the air before it, pointed directly at us. The unnatural blue light turned those lances into a shimmering, perfect array. It would have been pretty, if you could ignore the death part of being the one they were pointed at. I made an instinctive movement: I dropped to the floor, flattening my spider bulk so even the tips of my legs barely cleared the ground, and shrieked at the others to get down.
It saved us, but only just.
The volley ripped overhead, half the lances skewering the revenant corpses behind us. The other half slammed into the stone walls, sending slivers of black basalt screaming over our heads. A few missed entirely and buried themselves deep in the ice, where they steamed with a dry, unnatural cold.
“That would’ve turned us to ice cubes,” Angus panted, wide-eyed as he rolled back to his feet. “Jesus Christ, that’s not normal—”
"It's a goddamn artillery mage," Signe spat, already conjuring a shield of crackling green force that flickered as another Ice spear slammed against it. Signe was right, this wasn't just an overgrown spell-caster; it was a machine gunner with a PhD in freezing things to death. We didn't wait to see what the naga shaman would do with its free time. Through some unspoken agreement, Kels and Angus flanked left, drawing their aggro with shouts and thrown debris, while Signe remained where she was, conjuring another barrier.
I went hard right, hugging the jagged outcroppings of black rock that rimmed the edge of the amphitheatre. All the while, my thoughts ran a hot, frantic current beneath the ice of my attention. The naga's Charisma stat was monstrous, and I had no real idea what that might mean beyond what the System told me. If it had any Skills that leveraged Charisma, we'd be in for a very bad time.
I’d never had the pleasure of fighting a boss monster with the intelligence to actually coordinate its attacks, not just by bestial cunning or a dumb brute’s instinct, but with a tactical self-awareness that bled through every movement. While the prospect excited me, I wasn’t quite sure now was the best time to be experiencing it.
The Naga didn’t so much as hesitate as it saw us scatter; it swept its staff in a spiral, and a barrage of razor-thin ice disks hissed out in a curving screen across the entire width of the arena. The move was so precise it could have been drawn with a protractor, and it would have shredded us to ribbons if we had tried to close with a straight charge. I could see the exact geometry of the assault for what it was: an opening salvo, meant to herd us, not kill outright.
I skittered off to the right, planting my gaze squarely on the naga, watching as [Gaze of Bane] began to do its gruesome work. The naga thrashed in anger and in pain. Its massive tail lashing around behind it as it searched for the cause of its pain until its gaze landed on me. Its tail whipped around, and I crouched, preparing to leap clear of the blow. Suddenly, the strike was oncoming impossibly fast, and I had no time to move. The naga's tail smashed into me with all the force of a loaded bus as my [Auric Armour] activated, covering me in plates of hardened energy. For all the good it did.
Even with all my mass, I was smashed up against the wall of the chamber while my vision went white as my [Auric Armour] shattered under the impact. Despite the pain, I couldn't afford to stay still now that I had its attention. A web line dragged me out of the way just in time as the naga's tail came crashing down for a second blow right where I had been only a moment before.
Hissing in anger, I launched an [Edge Glare] from my good eye. The near-invisible arc of destruction blasted out, and for a split second, I saw a look of near panic in the naga's eyes. A blur of motion preceded its staff coming around, and a bright blue barrier snapped into existence just as my Spell reached it. The blue barrier shattered with a cacophony similar to several china cabinets being dumped over simultaneously. Yet it withstood my [Edge Glare]; there was no power left in the spell, and it faded in the next moment.
The naga stood there unharmed.
I hissed in frustration and leapt to the side to avoid several ice spears flung my way in retaliation. That was the first time something had been able to block my [Edge Glare] directly. A streak of nervousness ran through my mind. One of my best moves had failed to damage the monster. It was admittedly a blow to my confidence. It did give me some information; its magic and spell casting had to be powered by its massive Charisma, much like my own. I wasn't sure how that information could be helpful at the current time, but it was good to know regardless.
