Julia looked at the door to the longhouse with trepidation. This was the final obstacle: the boss. She had eliminated the penultimate encounter with relative ease—especially compared to the second encounter, which had given her a large scar to remember it by.

  The encounter was one she’d seen before with Braden and Ravina. It was a patrol of goblins that followed the same route. They would march back and forth across the lines of tents in the same path over and over. It was technically possible to ignore them completely and sneak past, but Julia felt it a bad idea to get into the habit of leaving enemies behind her.

  She waited until they passed by before digging a large hole in their path using her Earth Magic. She formed spikes at the bottom and suspended a fine layer of dirt over the hole to disguise it. Holding such a thin layer of dirt in the air over the hole with Manipulation wasn’t too mana-intensive, and it was more than sufficient in the darkness.

  The goblins, one and all, walked over the hole and onto the layer of earth she was suspending—which she simply dropped. Most were killed by either the fall or the impaling stakes at the bottom, but the rest would eventually suffocate since Julia buried the hole again. She did this both to finish the goblins off and so that she didn’t accidentally fall into her own trap on the way back out of the dungeon.

  She stood now before the boss fight with 40% of her total mana, a leather chestpiece that was barely hanging onto her frame, and what was undoubtedly a nasty scar across most of her back. The cost of her hubris had been steep so far. She hoped it wouldn’t cost her further.

  She pushed the doors open, but before she actually entered, she began casting her defenses. She first spread a layer of water across her skin. The implementation of this spell wasn’t too dissimilar from Faraday’s Cage, just with water. This was something she had come up with after using her Water Shield spell so much. Spreading the shield around her entire body provided robust protection, similar to wearing armor.

  There were a couple of problems with it, though. First, if she couldn’t see blows coming, she couldn’t make the water appropriately absorb the impact, so concussive force could still get through the shield. Granted, it should be severely diminished, but it would still get through. It was certainly better than getting hit raw, though.

  Second, spreading it around her entire body effectively trapped her in an airtight bubble. It would be simple enough to leave a few small holes in the water shield to breathe, but she couldn’t this time due to the next spells she would cast.

  She used the Vacuum spell to create a layer of vacuum around the water shield, just above it. Then, she layered the Faraday’s Armor spell on top of the Vacuum. This was the solution she had arrived at regarding the intense heat the Armor spell gave off. Creating a vacuum underneath the Armor meant that heat wouldn’t transfer across it, so she was completely insulated.

  That also had the unfortunate effect of limiting her air supply, as even a small hole in the vacuum could let heat through, since the Armor spell covered her entire body. Her solution to this issue was on her wrist.

  She began to feed a small but steady stream of mana into her bracelet. Normally, it operated by storing and using ambient mana from the environment, but this time she needed to inject some intent into its operation, so she used a small amount of her own mana. She infused the mana with the intent to pull her exhaled air into the bracelet and eject the un-breathed air from the bracelet.

  Yes, she had stored air in the bracelet ahead of time. She’d had the realization a couple months ago that, as long as the thing she was trying to store wasn’t alive and could physically fit, it could be stored. This included air and boosted her supply of breathable air to levels that were more than manageable for single fights. Braden had suggested if her entire bracelet contained nothing but air, she could even last for a whole day, or even longer if all she did was sit down.

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  Regardless, the time limit became more about her mana supply than the air she breathed. Although a small drain on her mana, it was still there. She had to recycle the air rather than only withdrawing air from the bracelet (which would not have required her to expend her own mana) lest the withdrawn air inflate her water armor into a water bubble.

  She finally layered Faraday’s Armor on top of the Vacuum and Shield, and she entered the longhouse. Immediately, she activated Truesight and saw lines of green begin wriggling beneath the ground. These were the roots the shaman controlled, and they were everywhere. This was why she had decided to take the shaman down first once again.

  She cast Gravity Magic on herself and, rather than attempting to completely negate her own gravity, lessened it. She launched into the air—soaring much higher and farther than her Attributes alone would allow, angled towards the shaman, and used the Dash spell to blast herself towards it.

  The hobs took up positions on either side of the shaman with their clubs held in front of them. They anticipated clubbing her as her momentum carried her towards them. However, Julia had accounted for this. She shot a Spire of earth out from behind the shaman. It wasn’t made to kill, as she felt she couldn’t reliably do it with just the one spell. It was instead made in a sort of club shape.

  The clubbed spire blasted into the shaman’s back and rocketed it forward, now directly in Julia’s path. She hit the ground, no longer worried about the vines, and crouched low. She used the momentum from her jump to slide across the packed dirt the final few strides to the shaman, who was now face-down in the dirt.

  She planted her feet on its back and plunged her sword down into the back of its neck. She twisted it and rocked it side-to-side to make sure the damage was done. Blood spilled into a grotesque puddle under the now-dead shaman’s head, and Julia withdrew her sword to a ready stance.

  Not ready enough, however, as one of the hobs had managed to reach her in the second-and-a-half it had taken her to land and dispatch the shaman. It clubbed her in the side, hard. She’d also forgotten to cancel the gravity spell, so she went flying to the side with the club’s momentum.

  The club the hob had hit her with went flying out of the hob’s hands when her Armor discharged, but the hob itself seemed unharmed. In retrospect, the club launching her away probably saved her another horrible bruise, as the other hob’s club came down where she had just been standing.

  She cancelled her gravity spell, landed with her feet on the ground, and tried to ignore the twinge of pain hidden in the tenderness of her side that told her there was likely more than a bruise. She estimated she had just under 25% of her mana remaining She couldn’t afford to be anything less than clear-headed right now, so her magic options were limited.

  She thought quickly and decided her sword would have to do the heavy-lifting. She drew on the dregs of her mana to stack the odds in her favor, casting Lightning Field on the ground directly in front of her while also reducing it to wet, sticky mud.

  The hobs charged her with a rage so fierce she could almost see the red in their eyes. The first reached the Field and immediately fell, convulsing. This, unfortunately, discharged the trap, so the second was unaffected. It was, however, affected by the thick mud. It stumbled in its charge and almost tripped, flailing its arms to keep upright. This minor mistake was its doom.

  Julia batted its club away from her with a water buckler formed on her left wrist and stabbed its right thigh with her sword. When it instinctively curled in on itself to grasp the leg that was stabbed, she left her sword embedded and grabbed at its head with her now-empty hand. The Faraday’s Armor discharged straight into its skull, and Julia saw the life leave its eyes almost immediately.

  Whatever hob had hit her initially had not gotten enough of a charge from the Armor to even notice—likely due to the clubs being large hunks of wood and not very conductive. She had topped up the charge contained in the Armor when she landed, preparing for a more decisive opportunity.

  Seeing the other hob shaking its head and attempting to get back up, she drew her sword out of the dead hob’s thigh and stalked over—walking over the wet mud like it was a paved road. She arrived at the hob just as it got to its knees and plunged the sword straight into its throat. It gurgled and made to grab the sword, but Julia withdrew it and kicked it back over into the mud. When it splashed onto its back, she froze the mud around it to make sure it stayed still while it died.

  Huffing and holding onto her side where she’d been struck, she couldn’t help but smile when she saw a chest materialize in the middle of the room—a blue box appearing above it.