We hunt monsters 13, p.46
We Hunt Monsters 13, page 46
Keith reached into his inventory and drew the World Titan’s Meteor. One side of the hammer was dark and depressed, but the other side glowed, hovering a few inches off the center sphere, ready to be used. Unleashing a weapon like this with allies around was risky, as the hammer had blowback damage. However, given the size of this monster and his relative height, Keith believed it shouldn’t cause them any harm.
“The attack will commence in ten seconds,” Keith said. “Tac will be handling coordination. You should have all pertinent info on the monster’s skills and what it can do. As soon as the first attack lands, I’ll be activating the Spell Scroll. Make sure you’re all ready to drop out from beneath the monster.”
“Everyone’s in position, bro,” Tac said. “Should I give them a countdown?”
“Probably a good idea,” Keith replied, taking a good grip on the hammer.
The monster continued moving, oblivious to the danger that hovered above, or perhaps, uncaring, confident in its own strength and defenses. Nothing had truly ever challenged it before, so it had no reason to believe the flea-sized creature hovering near its head was anything to be feared.
“Three, two, one…Geronimo!”
Keith launched himself downward, switching his Unconquerable Aura on, activating Heatstance and Battlefield Sylven. The blast of blue fired out from him in the form of a glowing blue elf-like woman who streaked down to strengthen his allies. The monster’s head very slowly turned up as the golden light of Unconquerable Aura drew its attention, but it was too late.
The World Titan’s Meteor came down with all the force of its namesake, slamming into the top of Electrus’s head with a massive detonation of force. Keith felt the backwash blast up through his arms and out his back, radiating through the air with an ear-splitting crack that blasted the forward storm wall away in a sphere nearly a hundred feet wide.
The effects on the monster were far worse. Its stony hide was cracked, massive fissures spreading from the point of impact as the monster’s head was forced down. Its feet scrabbled, even as the front three sets of legs buckled, the entire front half of the gigantic beast plowing into the stony ground and sliding forward. Its back legs followed as it capsized, its body swinging to one side as it continued its forward momentum. The scroll shone in the air, and the storm was forced further back as the dome expanded. Keith’s allies became visible as the monster finally skidded to a stop after nearly a hundred yards.
-1,602,700, Critical
Electrus is stunned for 2 seconds.
The damage notification flashed in the corner of Keith’s vision as he dove, triggering another of Field Leveler’s limited effects – the one he could use only once per week.
The stun lasted a pitifully short amount of time, but seeing as he was leaning so heavily on his speed, Keith dove from the air, crashing into the same spot as the monster began to stir. Crackling light sparked across his knuckles as the World Item’s effect triggered, blasting Electrus for 100 times his weapon’s normal output – at least, it should have. As with all things when it came to monsters like this, they had some way of avoiding near-instant death.
Given Keith’s current stats, a single attack of that magnitude from Field Leveler should have inflicted damage in excess of sixteen million points. Instead, he managed around ten percent of that. Electrus roared, streams of purple lightning flowing up to the spot Keith was striking an instant before impact.
The collision still blasted the monster’s head into the ground, shattering stone and cratering the ground. Blood flew, dark and oily, as Keith retreated back into the sky, the damage notification alerting him to how much he’d managed to do.
-1,578,188, Field Leveler, Critical
Electrus is stunned for 4 seconds.
Tac must have coordinated with the others because the moment the monster was down, they attacked. Spells flew from their casters while Bonker, Bruiser, Otis, and their other melee fighters dashed to attack its weak points – or rather, weakest points, since there were no weak points anywhere to be seen.
Meanwhile, Keith activated one of the Monster-Soul Scourge skills he’d been keeping in reserve. Scourge increased his melee damage against monsters for eight minutes. He followed that up by using Monster, which would cause him to take no damage from monsters for the next six minutes. It wasn’t a perfect cover, but it was close. He slammed into Electrus, driving Field Leveler into the exact spot he’d already cracked, his fists a blur as they slammed home over and over again.
Each blow should have inflicted well over 150,000 points of damage, and with the bonus from Scourge, the attacks should have been causing over three million, but purple lightning flickered up and around, catching and softening each blow an instant before it struck. Instead of seeing those numbers, or even hundreds of thousands of points of damage, Keith saw damage in the low tens of thousands.
-22,399
-22,690
-23,108
-24,172
His punches were coming so hard and fast, shaving off over 20,000 per blow was making a difference. Electrus’s stun wore off then, and the monster started to move again. With its maximum health chopped by more than half in a matter of seconds, it seemed Electrus was finally going to be taking them seriously.
The monster bellowed, its voice trumpeting out like a mix between a landslide, an elephant, and a set of wind chimes.
“Just hit us with a bunch of debuffs,” Selena’s voice said.
The tail rose and swept around, crashing into the darting group in the rear, which was doing its utmost to damage the monster while also remaining unobtrusive.
“There goes Little Timmy,” Tac said as a streak of gray flashed into the storm wall.
There was another flash of gray as Selena dashed after him.
“Looks like he managed to keep the worst off them, though.”
While Electrus attacked its rear, it also attacked up front. Lifting its head, lightning coursed over its body in crackling waves that danced and shimmered, blasting Keith off its stony hide. The monster rose to its feet as crackling purple light gathered between its stony jaws. With a roar, it unleashed the Photon Beam, painting the whirling storm in shades of blazing violet.
Keith didn’t technically need to dodge but knew that if he didn’t, he’d be driven into the storm. While he was immune to damage from monsters, he wasn’t immune to the effects of the weather it kicked up.
He flashed down to the ground, but the beam followed, ripping a line through the stone as though it were made of paper. Keith darted up and around, blasting up into the air and hurling War’s hammer, which had been summoned as soon as he’d been forced off the monster’s head.
The purple lightning crawling over its skin flashed, catching the hammer as it impacted and deflecting it off its skin. Electrus turned, moving with far more speed than Keith had believed possible, another Photon Beam gathering in its mouth.
It ripped across the sky, over twenty feet across and so intense that it warped the air around it. Keith pulled a Spell Scroll from his inventory and cracked the seal as he tossed it into the air.
“All Monstros Boss attacks cause half damage for three minutes,” he said as the Orc Emperor’s Rule Scroll activated.
For a moment, he worried it wouldn’t work, but as Selena dragged Little Timmy’s battered and bloodied body back into the calm space the previous scroll had carved out for them, Electrus’s attack focused on them just as Tac predicted it would an instant before. Not wanting to get in front of it – mainly because he wasn’t a tank and it was too big for him to block – this was the next best option.
The Photon Beam blasted down, but Naia and Bonker charged forward, planting their shields and activating defensive skills. With Keith’s boost for them being in his party – and in Bonker’s case, being a commander – as well as the Battlefield Sylven, their stats had both taken a nice jump.
The crackling beam of power slammed into their defenses as the healer rushed over to help Little Timmy before he died. Keith sucked in a breath, taking the momentary respite to attack again rather than allowing the monster to attack without suffering the consequences.
Keith used War’s Bond, an effect of his prosthetic arm. Power flooded into him as his stats skyrocketed. He dropped from the sky like a meteor, crashing into Electrus’s exposed neck using Armageddon Spear. The skill exploded against its rocky hide in a blazing white flash, causing the monster’s head to whip up as it roared in pain. The beam that Naia and Bonker had been blocking slashed a line through the storm itself as it did.
Electrus whirled back on him, red lightning, wind, and stone suddenly flowing into the free space.
“Uh-oh,” Tac said an instant before the Monstros Raid Boss unleashed its Storm Beam.
70
The attack slammed into Keith with more force than he’d believed possible, far surpassing any single hit he’d taken from any of the bulls during their fight. One second, he was facing the monster, and the next, everything had vanished. He’d been blasted into the heart of the storm, wind and stones ripping at his armor while flickers of red and purple lightning slammed into him from all directions.
Storm Beam was a two-part attack. The first involved Electrus gathering the power of the storm between its jaws. The second involved flinging his opponent out into said storm, leaving him to be stripped bare by its intense pressure and the natural forces it emitted. The problem for Keith was that the storm, while technically generated by Electrus, didn’t qualify as an attack, so it began tearing away chunks of his health almost immediately.
-35,000 damage, Superstorm
-35,000 damage, Superstorm
-35,000 damage, Superstorm
The notifications came so fast that Keith couldn’t keep up with them. Heatstance activated again, boosting his armor as he blazed against the tearing storm. Keith’s health was plummeting so he shot forward, shoving against the storm. It ripped his body to shreds as stone, wind, and lightning tore at him.
Pain flashed through his arms and legs as they were battered, but he still had the power of War flowing through him, which helped push back against the agony. Ten seconds after he’d been thrown into the storm, Keith blasted back onto the battlefield, rocketing forward like a missile and slamming into Electrus’s side with enough brute force to throw the gigantic monster clean off its feet.
-29,897, Blunt
Electrus roared as it toppled, a Photon Stream ripping up through the air, once again taking pressure off their tanks, while Otis, Navy, Syla, and Ripper attacked the fallen monster. A quick check of its HP showed that his group had actually managed to do some damage, having shaved off a solid 300,000 points between them. While that might not have seemed like much, given the fact that he was ripping millions off at the same time, it made all the difference.
Keith was extremely experienced and had access to skills and items none of them could dream of, so it made sense that he was going to be doing the lion’s share of the damage. Electrus bellowed, then began unleashing attacks at a much more rapid pace. Blasts of red light flashed from its body, slamming into the ground and leaving it glowing red. This was Plasma Crack, an attack that could turn someone from living to ash in an instant while also leaving any ground it touched superheated for ten seconds after.
The plates on its body rose, kind of like the quills on an angry hedgehog, revealing the small holes covering its body. Steam blasted out in all directions, superheating the space and raising the temperature even further.
“Is it just me, or is it hot in here?” Tac said, waving a mental hand in front of an imaginary face.
“You did not just make a heat-related joke,” Keith said, gripping his twin daggers as he flashed down, ignoring the jets of steam blasting out.
He was rocked to one side as a near-invisible pocket of condensed air slammed into him, spinning him in the air. It felt like he’d been hit by a falling boulder, but his skill was still active, so the damage was negated.
“Yeah, Supersteam combined with Compression Blast is gonna be a big problem,” Tac said. “Makes it almost impossible to see or sense it coming. Speaking of which…”
Keith rolled left, then further left as two more blasted out. He flashed through the haze of steam surrounding the monster as it struggled to rise. He’d nearly reached it when a fork of red lightning blasted from one of the crystals on its back, slamming Keith in the chest and blasting him back into the storm.
Keith lost another 70,000 points of health before he dove back in, using Lightswap to drop to the ground, followed by Magician to avoid another Plasma Crack.
Electrus rose back to his full height as Keith used Speed Demon, flashing between attacks and coming out near the monster’s rear, where the others had taken up position and were fighting to keep the endless stream at bay.
“We need an opening!” Navy yelled to him as he dove behind the tanks.
Little Timmy was back in place, clutching a new shield. Apparently, none of the others had been prepared, and he’d been forced to take that tail strike all on his own.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, the gigantic tail came whipping through the air. Keith scooped and flung a chunk of loose stone, reappearing fifty feet in the air and triggering Shard Sponge. The tail slammed into him, and while it wasn’t exactly deflected – Keith was still blasted into the ground, forming a new crater – the tail was forced off course, driving into the ground behind the group rather than hitting them at full force.
Electrus turned. Its gigantic head was streaming oily blood, and purple lightning crackled over its entire body. It roared again, its scream prolonged as the lightning began writhing faster and faster, turning from purple to blue in a matter of seconds.
“That would be Lightning Wrap,” Tac said.
“Everyone brace for impact!” Keith yelled, diving in front of the tanks the instant before the world turned into a blaze of brilliant light and crackling electricity, triggering the Overwhelm effect of Shard Sponge.
Tac had already warned him that it wouldn’t work perfectly as intended, but what it would do was keep everyone alive. The blue-white lightning slammed into them, ripping the ground apart, sending shards of glowing stone flying into the air and searing everyone in the area. Bonker staggered back, her shield melting to slag as burn marks tore their way up her arms and the side of her neck.
Naia deactivated as she was blasted into the storm, while Little Timmy dropped to his knees, having taken the brunt but managing to keep himself from being hurt too badly. Those behind the tanks also suffered, though the damage they took was minimal, thanks to Keith’s intervention.
The one who was hurt the most by the attack was the Raid Boss itself. Electrus roared as lightning cracked its stony hide, burning its exposed flesh and blinding it in one eye. Blood sprayed as the monster’s health dropped by nearly half a million points, bringing it down to roughly 1.7 million remaining.
Electrus managed to retain its footing, and the force of its attacks didn’t falter for even a moment. Worse, it seemed to be going straight into another AOE. A shell of spinning wind began gathering around its body, blunting all incoming attacks and further lessening the impact they had. The spell took less than five seconds for the monster to pull together, and unlike the others, this one was most certainly not going to miss anyone.
A rippling wave of compressed air blasted out in a dome, pushing outward in all directions at once. Stone chips and dust flew as the tanks braced themselves against the incoming attack. Keith tried to brace as well, but the wave of compressed air slammed into all of them with more than enough force to blast them out of the zone of calm and into the ripping storm.
“Bro, we need to get out of here, stat!” Tac yelled as Keith dragged himself to his feet.
His health was dropping once again, and it was also doing so for every member of the team. The dust and lightning were so intense that Keith couldn’t see a thing, but Tac’s guidance helped pinpoint his allies.
He took off running with Speed Demon, using Tough Shield to keep some of the damage off himself. He flashed through the spinning debris, narrowly avoiding a flying chunk of stone larger than he was. He found the first of his raid party and grabbed them by the arm. It was Towe, her health down to less than half and dropping quickly.
With a burst of effort, he flashed from the storm and into the relative calm of the monster’s cleared space. Except, the second they reappeared, a Photon Stream blasted from Electrus’s jaws, ripping into the ground and forcing Keith to teleport using Lightswap, keeping Towe from instant annihilation.
“Thanks for that,” she gasped, her eyes wide.
“Bro, we’re working on an extremely short timeline here,” Tac warned. “Selena’s already working on guiding some of them back, and I’m in contact with Bonker and Bruiser to do the same, but at this rate, they won’t make it out in time. It’s time to take a risk.”
Keith had been hoping to save this until they were further in, but he supposed that not using a weapon to save everyone and keeping it in reserve would ensure his mission failed before it really began.
With a thought, he summoned his orcs. His Bosses appeared first. Tourmaline came with his sword and shield, Goldie with her mithril knuckles, and Nubian with his ball and chain. Moonlight held her staff, and Chriokin, the Section Boss, was covered in rippling muscle.
All of Keith’s remaining armored and spellcasting orcs appeared as well. It was an impressive number, but he had no idea how many would be lost in the next few minutes.
“Take it down!” Keith yelled, pointing to the monster before diving back into the storm.
The whirling wind surrounded him on all sides, ripping and tearing at his health as he drove past Selena and four indistinct figures as they struggled their way free. He dashed past Little Timmy and Ripper, both of whom had two figures slung over their shoulders, and finally found the most lost of them all. Simmy, one of the human fighters, was struggling and stumbling in the wrong direction.
