Chapter 127 - Boss Room Breakthrough

  I punched away another over-enthusiastic dragonet, but there were at least a couple dozen of them still coming at us, and I was low enough on mana that I wanted to save most of what I had left for the final boss. Anything tier ten was going to be tough as nails, and I’d want to have every possible resource at hand to beat it. That was going to make taking the minions down a little more difficult, but I had Maggie to help, this time, and she was worlds stronger than she’d been when we started this run.

  “Got my sword handy?” Maggie asked.

  “Uh, I threw one of them. You can have this one, though,” I told her, flipping the blade around so I could hand it to her hilt first.

  She took the weapon and swung it experimentally. “What about you?”

  “I don’t really need a sword to handle tier five creatures,” I replied. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  We stood side-by-side as the dragonets reached us, swarming us. At first I was worried about whether Maggie could handle such a mass of monsters, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. Her high Stamina, Agility, and Strength let her keep up pretty well. The tier six Natural Armor she’d socketed stopped most of their attacks, and when one got a bite through her guard, her Heals helped her recover almost instantly.

  “Cam, I’m okay,” Maggie said.

  “Huh?” I parried a shot from one of the dragonets, then punched it in the face hard enough to smash its skull.

  “We need to finish this,” Maggie said. “I’ll fight defensively and Heal myself if I need it. You go. Finish this.”

  “You sure?”

  She laughed. “Yeah. As sure as I can be. Go!”

  Freed from worrying about her overmuch, I let loose.

  All these powers were still new to me. My insane Strength, Stamina, Agility, Natural Armor, Celerity, and Regeneration all had intense synergy, but I hadn’t had the time to explore those fully. I used all the powers constantly. But I hadn’t trained in their use, not to the level I would have liked. How fast could I really move? How did Celerity work with Agility to make me dodge better? How did Strength work with Natural Armor to turn my fists into weapons?

  I’d done all of these things before, but intuitively, instinctively. What I really needed was a couple of weeks to just train hard and learn how to maximize every power I’d acquired, how to use them all together.

  The world wasn’t going to give me that sort of time, so instead, I just let loose with everything I could.

  I dashed forward, using a burst of speed so intense that my hand blurred even to my vision, and put my fist through one of the dragonets. Then I lifted off, using Flight and Celerity in tandem to fly forward so fast my passage created a shock wave, sending the creatures flying to either side as I drove through their center. I kept flying, zooming past the smaller threats toward the larger one.

  Because I remembered something critical from the first battle—that we didn’t need to kill all the smaller ones. When I took out Big Fungus on the first dungeon run, all the remaining fungal monsters just died on the spot. I couldn’t guarantee this one would play by the same rules as the first, but since so much was the same about this room, it felt like a good bet.

  Maggie would be on her own, but the wake I’d left in my passage had sent most of the dragonets flying. It would take them precious minutes to get themselves back up and fighting again. By the time they were all back in the battle, I had hopes that this would all be over.

  The dragon saw me coming. She wasn’t as fast as me, but I was impossible to miss, zipping across the massive chamber like a streak of light. She opened her mouth and fired a beam of pure night.

  I slipped sideways, narrowly dodging her blast. She shifted her head and tried again. This one almost hit. I barely got out of the way. The side of my body closest to the beam was near enough to feel frigid cold emanating from it.

  She wasn’t going to get a third shot.

  I crashed into her at a significant percentage of Mach One.

  The boom from our collision shook the room. A moment later I crashed headlong into the wall behind her. Rocks exploded from the face, scattering everywhere. I slammed into the floor a moment later, dazed.

  Dizzy and ill from the crash, I stumbled my way back to my feet. How had I missed her? I was right on target. With my fists out in front of me, I should have hit her with enough force to at least make her feel it! But she was still there, pivoting around so her dangerous tooth-filled mouth could come at me.

  I put my fists up in a guard and screamed at her. “Come on then! Let’s finish this!”

  The reality was, I didn’t have much left. My mana was dangerously low. I didn’t understand how that had happened… Before launching myself at her, I’d still had about a quarter of my mana left. Now I was surviving on the dregs.

  She finished her turn, whirling to face me, jaws open. Oh, shit—she wasn’t going to try to bite me. She was going to use that black beam again. With my mana so low, I wasn’t sure I had enough left to use Celerity to dodge. I readied myself to avoid the attack as best I could…

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  But she froze, mouth open, staring down at me. For two long heartbeats her head just hung there, her dark eyes glaring hate.

  Then I spotted the hole I’d punched through her neck.

  I’d missed impacting her head. Somehow, she’d dodged just enough that I’d made contact with her neck, instead. I’d hit her hard enough, been going fast enough, that I’d torn my way through. As I looked, I realized I could see the glow of the luminescent fungus on the wall behind her through the hole. Blood gushed from the awful wound. She held on for another long moment, trying to keep herself alive through sheer will. It wasn’t enough.

  The dragon collapsed in a heap, dead.

  I took to the air just in time to see all the dragonets collapse, too. Just like the first dungeon run, they hadn’t survived the final boss’s demise. It was over. I landed and walked over to the dragon, tapping her body. A tier ten crystal appeared in my hand and was instantly absorbed into my body.

  It was another Cleanse. A tier ten Cleanse? That was amazing! The flood of memories from the crystal were intense, almost overwhelming, but the intensity was worth it. This stone taught me so much more about the spell than the first one had.

  Cleanse was powerful, all right, but it was limited as well. It could only cure conditions at or below the tier level of the user. The lesser werewolves were only tier five or six, which is why Marion had been able to cure the bites before they’d transformed. But after the werewolf victims transformed, the full curse was in effect. I couldn’t say for sure without seeing a werewolf in person, without using Cleanse to examine them, but my bet was that the full curse was a higher tier than Marion’s Cleanse. She’d only had what, tier six?

  I had a tier ten Cleanse, now. It might be possible to break the curse, even on people who’d already transformed. We might just be able to save Marion and all the others who’d been changed.

  First, we had to get back there. A shimmering portal appeared near the wall. Our way out.

  “Holy shit, Cam. You knocked me on my ass from across the room!” Maggie called out. “What happened to the little ones?”

  “They died when the big boss went down. Happened in the first dungeon, and I was hoping it might here, too,” I replied. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. We should get going, though. That thing looks like our way out, right?”

  I nodded. “It is. But we should collect the crystals first. We need to be quick, but there were about fifty of those little ones. That’s way too much power to leave behind. We may need it to take down Cerberus.”

  We spent a few minutes quickly gathering the stones. It turned out the critters dropped a mix of grey, clear, and white stones. The crystals were all tier five. We found four Heals, two Healing Aura, three Cleanse, six Natural Armor, three regeneration, two Celerity, and six of each stat crystal.

  I took two Regeneration, two Celerity, four Natural Armor, two Intellect, two Strength, two Agility, two Charisma, two Heal, two Healing Aura, and the Cleanse I’d absorbed to save her. I gave the rest to Maggie, who protested some, but I pointed out that I’d gotten the tier ten stone from the dragon.

  “Oh. I guess that’s more fair, then,” she replied. “What was it, anyway?”

  I laughed. “You’re not gonna believe it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. It’s Cleanse.”

  She joined in my laughter.

  My new setup was strong. I’d grown more than a little from this dungeon run.

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Clear Stone (Tier 9) - Strength

  Point 1, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 9) - Stamina

  Point 1, Third Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 8) - Agility

  Point 1, Fourth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 8) - Will

  Point 1, Fifth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Charisma

  Point 1, Seventh Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Intellect

  Point 1, Eighth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 7) - Agility

  Point 1, Ninth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 6) - Strength

  Point 1, Tenth Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Intellect

  +

  Point 2: Yellow Stone (Tier 5) - Flight

  Point 2, Second Ring: Yellow Stone (Tier 5) - Lightning Bolt

  Point 2, Third Ring: Yellow Stone (Tier 3) - Gust of Wind

  +

  Point 3: Grey Stone (Tier 10) - Natural Armor

  Point 3, Second Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 8) - Natural Armor

  Point 3, Third Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 6) - Regeneration

  Point 3, Fourth Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 6) - Celerity

  Point 3, Fourth Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 4) - Celerity

  +

  Point 4: Blue Stone (Tier 3) - Water Breathing

  +

  Point 5: Black Stone (Tier 5) - NightVision

  Point 5, Second Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Shadow Walk

  Point 5, Third Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Phantom Step

  Point 5, Fourth Ring: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Drain Life

  Point 5, Fifth Ring: Black Stone (Tier 4) - Darkness

  +

  Point 6: White Stone (Tier 5) - Cleanse

  Point 6, Second Ring: White Stone (Tier 10) - Cleanse

  Point 6, Third Ring: White Stone (Tier 6) - Heal

  Point 6, Fourth Ring: White Stone (Tier 6) - Healing Aura

  Spare Stones

  Clear: Stamina (Tier 4) x1, Stamina (Tier 1) x4, Strength (Tier 1) x4, Will (Tier 1) x5, Intellect (Tier 2) x1, Intellect (Tier 3) x2, Charisma (Tier 1) x6, Charisma (Tier 2) x8, Charisma (Tier 3) x3

  Yellow: Air Elemental (Tier 2) x1

  Grey: Regeneration (Tier 2) x1, Sense Danger (Tier 3) x1, Natural Armor (Tier 6), Natural Armor (Tier 3) x7

  Blue: Create Water (Tier 1) x6, Water Breathing (Tier 1) x2

  Once we’d gotten it out of our systems, we packed it up. I snagged the sword I’d thrown earlier. It wasn’t a bad blade. I turned it over in my hands. I’d keep it, at least for now. Sure, I was hoping that I’d be able to cure all the werewolves, but there was no guarantee of that. We might very well have to kill all of them, much as I prayed otherwise.

  “Come on, let’s go. People need us,” I said.

  “I’m ready,” Maggie replied.

  I picked her up and took off, Flying us through the portal. We appeared back in the dungeon hall again, right where we’d left. I flew us free of the building, and the doors rumbled closed behind us. I’d survived two runs through the place, and if anything the second attempt was easier than the first. Or I was tougher.

  I still wasn’t looking forward to going back there anytime soon.

  “I’m going to have to move fast,” I told Maggie. “I won’t drop you, but the wind is going to be rough.”

  “I’m Natural Armored up now, remember? I’ll be fine. Go! They need us! I was already transforming. Others might, too. Go!’

  I didn’t need any further encouragement. With a flicker of Will, I poured my barely-restored mana into Flight and Celerity, boosting forward through the air. We hit the river and followed it northwest. At the speeds I was able to hit, Harvard was only a minute away.

  We glided down toward a Yard that was full-blown chaos. True to her word, Reynolds had moved the bitten patients out into the Yard, placing them under awnings for protection from the elements. Most of them hadn’t changed yet, thank God, but at least four of them had. The four werewolves were making a break for it, heading for the north wall. If they got outside the walls, I’d have a much harder time catching up with them all.

  “Maggie, gonna drop you with the rest of the patients while I go deal with our friends,” I said.

  She’d already absorbed a couple of Cleanse stones from our drops, so like Marion before her, she had a tier six Cleanse. It ought to be enough to cure the bite of any lesser werewolves. I hadn’t suggested to her that my tier ten might cure the already transformed. I didn’t want to raise any hopes until I’d tested the theory.

  “Do it,” she replied. We were still about ten feet above the ground when I let her go, but her Agility was already higher than any pre-Event human had ever achieved, and her Natural Armor was more than strong enough to handle a short drop like that. She tucked into a roll as she landed and came up already running toward the tents, flashing me a thumbs up.

  I flew on, determined to stop the werewolves from escaping, one way or another.