11 | Beast of the Lake

The way to the Northern Forest Lake seems longer with the pace the group takes. The reinforcement composed of Jerud, Elise and Sir Isidore are on constant lookout for monster attacks while Keen and Vi walk without their guards up.

"What's the plan?" Elise raises an eyebrow. Her eyes are fixed on Keen. "You seem rather relaxed considering you are going to face a boss monster with a level of 35."

"As Vi briefed you in the Party chat —" Keen discontinues his speech when he hears Sir Isidore click on the sheath of his golden sword.

"This man is suspicious," Sir Isidore openly talks in his middle-aged voice with hints of huskiness. "How can a man on his first day in Esprit be capable of handling that many monsters with just his aura? And those are not some low-level monsters."

"Our guy's simply an insanely strong one." Jerud glances at him and then to Elise.

Keen and Vi are just silent, affecting the whole group. Elise is patiently waiting for his answer, Jerud is dismissive and Sir Isidore seems almost certain to strike with his weapon. Seeing there will be no progress without his elaboration, Keen stops and turns to face the others.

"The plan is for Elise to give assistance of buff skills while I inflict as much damage as I can to the beast of the lake." Almost condescendingly, he doesn't call Sir Isidore's name.

"The two other fighters will be there to protect you so you can focus on movement and flight spells for Vi," he gives her a thumb's a gesture. "Simple, right?"

"Are you mocking us?" Sir Isidore draws his sword. His poker face earlier has permanently turned to a pissed off version. He clearly considered himself superior to the group before Keen's complete disregard of the <Isolation Barrier> skill he used to protect the acacia tree where Vi was hiding earlier.

"Cool your head, uncle." Jerud warns in a serious tone with clenched fists on his side. "You were only assigned in this reconnaissance mission because Elise insisted we need a paladin."

Keen nods appreciatively at the bare fist fighter. It triggers more negativity to Sir Isidore's pride. But realizing that making an enemy out of all of them will be against his goal, the paladin puts back his sword in its sheath.

"I will have Vi assisting me. But she will have the final strike." Keen continues with his strategy. He draws their formation for the upcoming boss battle on the soil using a twig.

Seeing what he is trying to do, Elise insists on using one of her skills, <Battlefield>, which is able to project the party members and the terrain they will be raiding in a three dimensional plane before her.

'A navigational map!' Keen's eyes widen. More or less, it is so. However, according to Elise, such an intricate skill continuously drains her mana. At the moment, however, they need to be as accurate as possible about their positioning to overcome the boss battle with no casualty. One minor mana potion will be enough to replenish what she is losing now.

Sir Isidore is back to his poker face composure, silent and observant.

After finishing the discussion, Keen sighs purely out of boredom. Explaining to the tiniest detail was time-consuming. He must admit, however, that the reconnaissance team absorbed his strategy well. Even the egoistic paladin is surprisingly cooperative.

Finally, it is time to face the beast of the lake. As soon as their party enters the hostile vicinity of the enemy boss, Keen navigates through his Missions tab and accepts the quest for the beast of the lake. The timer starts counting down immediately.

"Let's go." Keen takes a deep breath through both nose and mouth.

"Yes!" Elise starts her incantations for several layers of support magic for Jerud. Sir Isidore raises his shield and stays at her rear guard, invoking a different method of buff skills for himself.

As the gigantic beast emerges from the lake's water, Elise casts the buff skills <Levitation>, <Aerial Maneuver>, <Increase Penetration>, <Increase Perception>, <Evasion>, and <Double Step>.

"Thank you." Vi gives her a brief smile before she joins Keen who has just conjured a bone lance on one hand and a centipede's scythe forelimb on the other.

"Those are..." Sir Isidore is looking over his shoulders and clenching his teeth upon seeing Keen's equipment.

"Those are some nice stuff," Jerud whistles.

Without a reply, Keen leads the attack with Vi a few steps behind him. She readies a pair of bone lance on both hands and glances at the dagger made from the giant centipede's forelimb on standby at her waist. Zeke's healing potion is also at her disposal, not to mention all of Elise's support skills.

As they approach the water, the monster becomes agitated. Keen continues running over the water without any buff skill from Elise while Vi follows him with several overlapping auras.

The members of the reconnaissance team catch their breath as the assassin duo plunges into the barrage of attacks from the worm-like tentacles. No matter what struggle the enemy does with over twenty of its elongated limbs to catch its prey, Keen successfully evades.

It then becomes easier for Vi to recognize the trajectory of the tentacles after her partner's evasive maneuvers. Thanks to Elise's skill <Increase Perception>, she can even sense tentacle attacks from behind.

"Amazing..." says Jerud with enthralled eyes. "It's hard to imagine that it's their first day in this place."

"And that's what I'm saying is suspicious." Sir Isidore butts in.

"No. It may be due to greater resolve or natural ability." Elise keeps her hands up to maintain her skill casting. She can clearly feel the rapid decrease in her mana. "Nevertheless, there are just those who are far greater than others. That remains true, either in real life or here in Esprit."

As the three converse from afar, the duo reach the 200-meter proximity from the beast's shell.

"Great." Vi switches one of her bone lance with her dagger equipped with poison.

"Stay sharp." Keen orders in a tone that Vi can clearly tell is excitement. "This is where it might get tricky."

Just as he expected, the attack pattern of the enemy boss changes and becomes faster. They also notice that the shell starts to release a sort of steam all over its surface.

"Rage Mode this early in the boss fight?" Elise catches her breath. It hasn't even been three minutes.

"Remove all your buff skills for me. Focus on Vi!" Jerud looks around and finds no sign of enemy boss's minions or stray monsters. "The freak doesn't seem to have spawned minions."

The monster releases a bellow that echoes throughout the Northern Forest. It can even be heard in Topsy Town. At that moment, many Transfers realize that some crazy people foolishly decided to take on the Beast of the Lake at night again.

Monsters in Esprit are many times more aggressive during the night. That is, they become stronger and more difficult to deal with. As precaution, no Transfer dares to go hunting at night, except for some occasional new ones who panic over the six-month time limit or even overly egoistic fellows who think too highly of themselves. Only a handful survived to tell the nightmare. A strong guild once challenged the horrific creature at the lake during nighttime and only one survived.

Jerud's forearms cover his face. However, Sir Isidore is already standing before him and Elise. Multiple layers of rune barriers are originating from his shield and are expanded around ten meters wide and five meters tall.

"I thought I was a goner." Jerud lets out a sigh of relief.

"That battle cry is so overwhelming. I wonder how miserable those two fools are right now." The paladin smirks, obviously expecting Keen and Vi to be obliterated by the attack. "Being that close to the source, their ear drums will have been shattered."

As they look at the fight scene though, their eyes are wide with awe upon seeing the gigantic boss monster with a level of 35 starting to disintegrate into black pixels. Atop its vanishing shell is the assassin duo.

Vi is waving her hand to them while Keen is just standing with both his weapons gone from both hands. Additionally, Elise recognizes a dark purple, self-illuminating gem dropping from the center of the monster. Tears start to well on her eyes.

The pair joins them carrying the gem and all other loots.

"It turns out that boss itself is the dungeon." Keen chuckles softly.

"How...How?" Sir Isidore grunts in disbelief. He simply cannot accept it. Many guilds have tried to defeat that first boss monster of Esprit and all failed. What's more is that these two assassins managed to do it at night, where monsters are known to be much stronger.

"It's thanks to Ms. Elise," Vi winks playfully.

"What?" Jerud is clearly puzzled.

Keen then explains what actually transpired.

As if recognizing the channeling cue for the monster's area of effect or AoE attack, Elise quickly used up a pure mana potion to cast a multi-layered barrier for physical attacks around Vi. She made it large enough to even encompass Keen.

However, that only happened after he has already forcefully kicked a significant amount of water before him to act as a water wall that hid his presence from the creature. When Elise's skill finished channeling their armor from the bellow, he grabbed Vi and jumped at the monster's shell. He then skewered the bone lance into a small space not covered by weapon trophies. Due to its high penetration capability, Vi's dagger was able to plunge its imbued quick-acting poison to the crack.

For a little detail Keen purposefully omitted from the story, he used <Blood String> channeled through his lance's surface to pierce through the monster to do a lot of internal punctures. He then used <Entropy> during the 0.01 second delay between the monster's HP dropping to zero and it's disintegration to pixels to absorb it. Even Vi was not able to see him do it.

"Impossible!" Sir Isidore stomps a foot against the grassy ground like a whining kid.

"I don't think I will be able to pull of a stunt like that," Jerud shrugs.

To the speechless elf, Keen conjures the monster core and hands it to her.

"I believe you deserve this more than anyone else," he says in a tone that is surprisingly gentle given his last conversation with her. "We wouldn't have survived if not for your barrier."

Tears falls down her cheeks uncontrollably as she takes the offer and embraces the Release core. She starts sobbing as she falls on her knees.

Vi leans down and gives her a soft embrace.

"The Release inside that core might contain the memories of your friends." He continues after clearing his throat.

"How...How did you know?" Elise asks without looking at him. She is both embarrassed and thankful that she doesn't know how she would look like if she sees his face.

"I wasn't sure until now." Keen answers quickly. With hands on his side pockets, he looks away from her direction. "This was their last mission, right?"

She nods with a soft murmur of affirmation while still sobbing.

"Elise..." Jerud clenches his fists, feeling useless at her most vulnerable moment. He didn't even know about her sad story. He even prided himself as being the closest to her. Yet a complete stranger who has just been with her for a day knew as much.

"Errr, how about we discuss how we split the loots." Keen clears his throat, obviously making the situation less tense.