58 DanMachi 28

The Ijiraq roar reverberates around the forest. As it lifts its staff high in the air, and two massive magic circles form over its head, using [Mind Arts] I store the information for a later review and attempt to interrupt it, but the vast distance between us prevents me. Not giving me a chance to get closer the first spell fires off absurdly fast, a wave of gray mana washes over the forest, prompting our pendant shields to activate instantly. Like a cliff parting a wave, the all-encompassing shield shook, hexagon, after hexagon falling apart, but thankfully, blocking all the incoming damage, and unceremoniously shattering as the AOE spell ends, all ten thousand points of mana exhausted in a blink of an eye.

There was some kind of corruption infused into the spell, melting away even magic. The pendants still had only two more charges left, so we had to be careful.

The trees tens of kilometers around us melted away in an instant, giving birth to wriggling masses of black biomass. Both of us grimace at that, imagining what would have happened if the spell had truly hit.

The floor boss slams the end of its staff into the ground and the second spell activates sending a wave of light blue magic our way. Not wanting to waste another charge of the pendant, I grab onto Olive and manually cast [Svalinn] around us, just as the spell impacts us, it shields us from the spell's effects and saves a pendant charge.

This time the spell freezes everything around us, crystalline ice from on the ground, and at the same time morphs the biomasses into black and blue abominations with tentacles. The newly created monsters were composed of different shapes and sizes but had a few things in common.

They had multiple tentacles, protruding from all around their blobious bodies, and a single eye, and a maw, that could unhinge to cover seventy percent of their full body size. These new creatures, promptly start moving toward us, flailing their tentacles around, while their creator, started weaving new spells, aimed straight at us.

"Shit!" I exclaim. "I've seen too much porn, not to know where this is headed!" A large smile appeared on my face, as Olivia facepalmed.

"Didn't you say you can stop his spellcasts?" She annoyed asks, between the swings of her blade separating tentacle, after tentacle.

"I can, but not from this far away!" I answer, dodging the fast-moving projectile spell, that impacted the ground where I was just a moment ago, then add. "The guy seems like some kind of summoner, or a necromancer, be careful of its spells!" I yell out giving a glance at where the spell landed and spotting the sizzling and corroding ground around it.

I take a deep breath and rush forward, while dodging rays and projectile spells raining down on me, without giving myself a moment even to breathe. I start returning fire, multiple magically created weapons form and cleave through the mass of tentacle monsters, closing upon us, and clearing a way toward the boss.

The Ijiraq, now standing directly in front of us, chooses to engage us in close combat. He rises his staff high, then slams it down directly at me, a quick [Blink] removes me from the location, just before the staff hits the ground, leaving devastation in its wake. The ground hollows in, and a wave of dirt spreads out from the epicenter. The boss doesn't stop there, it rises the staff a bit and swipes it sideways aiming at Olive. Who similarly to me avoids it with a quick [Blink], and arrives right at the monster's leg.

Now, this is where our troubles begin, the monster's skin was tough but could be still damaged. If only it wasn't tens of meters thick, we could actually do some real damage to him. Olives [True Cut] infused with [Sword Aura] and [Infuse] could only leave a shallow, five to ten-meter gash on its skin. Doing no genuine damage to any of its internals.

I took aim at the monster's hollow eyes and fired multiple [Infused] [Arsenal] blades into it, changing all of their affinity to death, expecting it to erode its eyes, or at least affect it in some way, but sadly my spell does absolutely nothing. The spell impacts its eyes and shatters on contact.

"Death affinity does nothing!" I yell, dodging another swipe with the staff. While my [Destiny] aura flares vaporizing the tentacle monsters around me. "I'll try holy, if that doesn't work I'm going with poison, but then we'll need to play for the long game!" I shout out and receive a nod from my vanguard.

Fifty spears of shining bright light, form around me, infused with holy affinity they gain a yellow glow, which shifts to a brilliant golden after I add magic penetration to the mix, they break the sound barrier a second later go of them. The spears sink tens of meters deep into its skin, and the beast visibly reacts. A roar escapes its maw, shaking the terrain around it, but the damage done is minimal. It felt like I was fighting a bear-sized enemy with only toothpicks.

"It works, but I can't do enough damage, I'll try the poison and holy combination!" I shout out as Olive cuts apart the beast's tendon, making it fall to one of its knees. "GOOD JOB!" An [Sage's Wisdom] enhanced [Alter Orb] appears over my head, charged with mana to the brim, it rapidly shifts its affinity to Holy, and a golden hue surrounds it as I apply [Magic Penetration] to the spell.

I sink tens of thousands of mana just to cast the spell, but my mana regeneration is keeping up with the demand. It fires a thick, fifty-centimeter-wide, golden ray of light, aiming at the monster's head, trying to spear through it.

The monster now grounded, and only kept in its upright state by grabbing onto the staff. Starts chanting a spell, and a massive magic circle forms over its head, similar to the one the fired off at the start of the fight.

"Oh no, you don't!" I activate [Focus] and insert my mana into the already forming spell, morphing some of the runes and modifying the spell info to a holy spell, and finish it by adding the rune for self-targeting and letting the monster finish the cast. All of this happened in a blink of an eye, thanks to my extremely high intelligence, wisdom, and [Focus]'s ability to increase my thinking speed.

"GET BACK!" I yell out to Olive, who [Blink]'s to my location without a complaint, just fast enough not to be affected by the spell.

A column of light descends from the heavens, only targeting the area around the monster. Vaporizing the ground around it. With the mana invested into the spell being almost double my total, the beast starts slowly burning away. However, the spell didn't last long enough to deliver the finishing blow. The beast now looked like a half-roast deer, its flesh glowing red, some of it charred into an unrecognizable mess, others melted away, exposing bone and internal organs.

The moss surrounding it fully burned away, and now a naked monster, with a missing arm and a fully exposed charred skull stood before us.

Olive springs to action, infusing everything she had into her sword, rising her boost skill to the extreme limits, and [Blink]a's right on top of the monster's head, sinking her sword directly into its exposed skull. A flash of light and an explosion greets us, flinging Olive off the monster, but I catch her with [Blink] and [Fly]. I quickly look back at the remains of the monster and find its head fully disintegrated. Leaving it standing, with only his lower body still in relative peace. But surprisingly, the fight was not over yet.

"Did you get a kill notification?!" I ask hurriedly, panic in my voice clearly audible.

"No!" A quick [Blink] deposits us a few kilometers away from the beast and I place her on the ground. She drops to her knees, with ragged breaths. A quickly cast [Gift of Life] revitalizes her but doesn't take care of her severe headache. She grunts and then drops to the ground, but I don't have time to focus on her. A newly formed magical circle, with a few runes I've never seen before forms over the carcass of the beast.

The wriggling masses of biomass, frozen in their places the moment Olive delivered her attack, now, as if dragged by some unseen force start flying off towards the beats.

"Fuck!" I exclaim. "Can you take care of yourself?" I ask worriedly.

"Yeah, I'm not sure what's happening to that fucker, but kill him before he finishes whatever he's doing!" I nod, and [Blink] on top of the beast's body. Extending my [Destiny] aura to the max and shifting its affinity to fire. Burning most of the creatures flying toward the already downed boss.

Even with the overcharged spell, some do reach their destination, and seep into its wounds, rapidly closing them and regenerating parts of his flesh. It was not long before all the blobs were gone from the clearing, and the boss has regenerated parts of his skull, his brain now in the open and its eyes shining with green light again. It attempts to rise, but without his staff, which was vaporized by his own spell, and support, he's not getting up any time soon.

[Alter Orb] still running, multiple lasers carving out large gashes into the beast's body, I redirect its rays to focus on the exposed brain. A thunderous roar escapes its maw, and it opens its claws, revealing multiple spells forming. On each of them, a single spell circle, [Focus] still active allows me to disassemble two out of six, but the other four complete their runic sequences and fire off a gray laser-like beam toward me. Their speedway exceeds my ability to dodge, or even think, but the pendant comes to a rescue again, forming a magical shield around me that blocks the spell only for a fraction of a second, then instantly shatters, and reforms consuming the last charge, to block the next incoming spell, giving me just enough time to [Blink] the fuck out of the spells way.

Sweat covers my body, as I think how close I was to waste my [Blessed by Death] title's extra life. The spells it fired, had a strange affinity, one I didn't even know about. I'll come up with a name for it later on, but from its runic script, I've seen it was a combination of Death, Time, and Poison. A truly devastating combination, and a fucking mana intense one.

Switching [Alter Orb] to that affinity, as it still had tens of thousands of mana points in it, I watch as it lasts barely a millisecond after firing, then disperses, as spell and I, both run out of mana simultaneously. A shadow of a headache spikes my mind, but my mana regeneration quickly fixes that.

Even that one millisecond, had a devastating effect, not only did it cleave right through the center of the boss's forehead, courtesy of magical penetration, but the after-effect of it corroded everything around it. The fifty-centimeter-wide hole, quickly become ten and a half meter one, consuming a large part of its brain and finally downing the monster. Its glowing green eyes wink out and its body lurched. It felt like I was watching it all in slow motion, as the massive beast slowly toppled over, shaking the ground on impact.

[Ijiraq (Level 7) slain 70,000 XP Received]

Unnatural calmness washes over me, as the kill notification appears on my screen and all the tension leaves my body. My nervousness quickly disappears and my body sags, as all of my bosting skills deactivate. I take in a deep breath then reappear next to the still-sitting Olive.

"Are you alright?" I ask.

"Yeah." She says, looking at me while squinting her eyes. "If you had a spell like that, why didn't you start off with it!" She rises her voice.

"That's the thing, I didn't have a spell like that when we started the fight." I say and sit down next to her. "It was the same affinity the guy was firing off at us." A grimace appears on her face, as she imagines getting hit by one of those spells. Then sighs, and pulls me into a hug.

"Nice job." She says patting my back and giving me a small smile.

"Thanks." I turn towards her and plant a kiss on her lips. "You also did amazing." I say patting her head, then notice all the grime covering us and fire off a [Clean] to get rid of it.

"That was harder than I thought it would be." She says.

"Yep, I wonder what else we'll meet, going down." I say.

"You should go loot it before it starts disappearing." She reminds me.

"Yeah..." I push myself off the ground. "Can you stand?"

"Yeah, I'm already in tip-top shape." She says with a smile then extends her hands asking for help to get up.

I grab onto it and pull her up. She wobbles on her feet so I pull her closer, then [Blink] us back to the location of the fight. The dungeon has already started the process of reclaiming the boss. So I had to act fast, I grab my sword and cut into its chest searching for the magical stone, and oh boy did I find one.

The size of this thing couldn't be compared to normal drops, it was a half meter wide and a meter in length, radiating out mana like crazy. I placed it into my inventory and quickly removed the leftover parts of its skull and a few claws. Just as I finished with the third finger, the body bursts into mana particles and is reabsorbed by the dungeon floor. Grumbling I turn towards Olive.

"It's still better than nothing." Seeing my expression, she comments then shrugs.

"Yeah, and that magical stone is going to go for a few million if we ever sell it. Might be smarter to invest it into some high-end enchantments." I reply and start thinking about it.

"Do whatever you want with it, we're not hurting for money. How is your falna stat doing? I'm almost maxed out, but I'm already tired as hell." She comments.

"Same, the boss shouldn't respawn for a few months, let's move back and make a camp, eat, and sleep. We can continue tomorrow."

"Sure." She nods and stands up, cleaning her trousers from all the dust.

I grab her hand and [Blink] us toward the forest, a few kilometers away from this location. Thanks to our pre-packed food, we had a nice meal, then Olive took out the already set up tent from her inventory.

"Did I ever say I love the Inventory System?" She asks.

"I'm not sure... But it is really convenient." I say, and I take out the ward stone I created for these kinds of situations.

It ran on magical stones and had an alarm and shield spell embedded into it. It will wake us up if anything approached us, and give us time to prepare for combat. The only drawback was that it used a full level six magical stone for a single night's watch, but we did have a few of those laying around.

We got into the tent and prepared for sleep, today's dive was mentally and physically exhausting for both of us. The moment our heads fell onto the pillows, our eyes closed and dreamland pulled us in.

The night was a peaceful one until it wasn't. I wake up to a scream, I jump to my feet, blade already in my hands and ready for a fight. [Infuse] coating my blade and [Celestial Eyes] already cast, searching for an enemy. But all my abilities come back clean. I turn to my left and notice Olive still sleeping, a frown marring her face, cheeks wet from all of her tears, and flailing around. Checking on the system time I find out we already slept for seven hours, that'll have to be enough. I shake her awake and find her shaking.

"Calm down." I say gently to the startled girl. "It was a dream, it was a dream, calm down." I repeat then pull her into a hug a gently rock her while petting her head.

"It wasn't a dream!" She shouts tears still running down her cheeks fear clearly visible on her face. "It doesn't want us here!" Her weeping increases and she turns around and plants her face right into my chest tightly hugging me. As her tears coat my top, I can't help but ask.

"Who doesn't want us, where?"

"The dungeon or at least what's at the bottom, doesn't want us going deeper! It appeared in my dreams."

"Shit..." my rocking increases, as I start thinking about it. "Are you okay to talk about it?" I apprehensive nod is all I receive. "How did it look like?"

"It didn't have a static shape, it shifted multiple times, it appeared first as a talking Goblin." She answers after taking a deep breath.

"So some kind of shapeshifter?" I ask while rubbing my chin.

"I don't think so." She shakes her head. "It felt more like it was controlling it. As a dark tendril connected to the mind of it."

"Fuck, I need to teach you [Mind Arts] or make you an enchantment that would block all mental assaults." I stop and focus on Olivia with my mana sense, a thin tendril of mana starting from her head, and going down toward the floor of the dungeon. Shattering it just like that might cause some complications. I need to shield her mind from whatever is affecting her.

Realizing that I already have one enchanted item that would serve the purpose. I reach into my inventory and pull out her ring. "I wanted to give you this on a special occasion, but if it stops whatever is happening to you, it's better I give it to you now." I pull off her gloves and place it on her finger.

'Yeah, I hope she doesn't misunderstand.'

The moment the ring made contact with her, her erratic breathing stopped, her tears dried up and her expression changed from utter terror to a confused one.

The confusion on her face doesn't disappear, she looks up at me, with questions in her eyes.

"What just happened?"