48 Eldritch monstrosity - End of volume 1

As Mark looked up he saw the boss monster holding the barrier around him with its two hands and scraping it with the scythe-like appendages.

'A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.' thought Mark and fired off a barrage of bullets at the monster.

However, it didn´t seem to be fazed at all. Instead of retreating the monster simply blocked the attack with its scythes.

'That´s some nice durability you got there.' Mark wondered.

While Mark was standing calmly behind his barrier the monster started repeatedly stabbing the living hell out of it, making screeching noises.

Hearing the sound, the group of hunters covered their ears. Even the wyrm stopped its offense and coiled around itself.

'Page 6, Shockwave'

A wave of air blasted the monster several meters away. It swiftly recovered from the shockwave and flew back at the magician.

'Page 16, Siphon'

'Floating without any wings, hiding its mana like its no problem, with a body tough enough to block magic bullets and a brain smart enough to attack me out of the bunch. Sign me up, cause I wanna become a monster. Well, maybe not this eldritch horror, but something like a nice dragon.'

While the creature neared Mark the raid team got back on their feet and got ready to attack.

'Page 2, Magic-siphoning barrier, permeability: air, light' he edited the barrier and told them. "Go get the dragon. I´ll take care of this weird octopus."

"You sure?" asked Clark.

"Yeah, no problem."

The creature´s scythe shone in bright light. When it struck the barrier, a small crack appeared on it.

"I see a pretty big problem, though." retorted Clark.

Mark just waved his hand and let out his mana. The barrier quickly absorbed the substance and repaired itself before the boss monster struck again.

"Alright, got it." said Clark and the team rushed towards the uncoiling dragon, leaving only Tristan standing around watching the ongoing battle.

Mark then turned his attention back to the beast and analyzed it properly. Thick elongated skull with tiny eyes, a monstrous mouth with its lower jaw separating into two, two pairs of arms, spiky appendages coming from its back, and tentacles instead of legs.

'This thing has to reproduce, right? So is it a mama or papa eldritch horror or maybe a hermaphrodite?' Mark thought about some truly inconsequential things.

'Page 4, Targeted freezing'

The magic flare was cut in half by the monster´s blade. However fortunately for Mark that was irrelevant and the locator entered the beast´s body.

Several streams of freezing cold water flew out of the barrier and hit the creature. Its assault was slowing down as the mass of ice piled up on its body until it completely stopped. The monstrosity was left trapped in a solid chunk of ice.

Mark started editing his bullet barrage spell in order to kill the beast without damaging its body too much.

As he aimed the magic circle toward the creature´s xenomorph-like skull it started glowing red with the rest of the body glowing bright white.

The chunk of ice exploded and the horror flew to the side and started smashing and bashing the barrier with unparalleled speed and strength, until.

*CRACK*

The barrier broke.

'Well, it was a good try. It couldn´t have known that I already regenerated my mana.'

The shattered barrier dissipated into nothingness and left a massive amount of mana in the air which was swiftly absorbed by the second barrier which was automatically deployed by the grimoire.

Seeing the impenetrable defense Mark displayed, the monstrosity decided that this fight led nowhere and began flying toward the unarmed reporter standing by.

'Page 18, Bullet barrage, shots: one, kinetic energy: 10MJ, locator: aim assist'

Immediately after the spell was cast the creature flopped to the ground just a meter in front of Tristan with red blood spilling from the large hole in its head.

Mark walked up to the corpse and told Tristan. "Hunter equipment, don´t forget it for the next raid. You could´ve died."

"Yeah, I´m well aware." Tristan said, breathing heavily.

Mark then cast his levitate spell on the corpse and went further into the village, where the fight was happening.

"Let´s take a look at how they´re doing." he said on his way.

When they walked past a wooden house a battlefield could be seen. The town plaza was turned upside down with countless corpses of the lizardmen lying around.

The wyrm was coiled around Tyler, blasting him with its toxic breath. Gina was freezing its body with [Bite of the frost] but the dragon didn´t seem to care that much.

Lucian threw a dagger from his waist at the dragon´s eye, blinding it. This gave Tyler some room for breathing, while the monster attacked Lucian.

Mark just watched unsure whether he should intervene or not, since they seemed quite capable of defeating the overgrown snake.

As Lucian was dodging the monster´s bite attacks, Emma jumped silently at the top of its head and trusted her rapier into its forehead.

Unfortunately, such a narrow weapon didn´t damage its brain enough to kill the creature so it proceeded to shake Emma off of its head.

Tyler who in the meantime got a boost for his vitality from Clark ran at the wyrm and tackled it with his brute strength, flipping it over on its back.

Lucian slashed through the beast's stomach, finishing the battle. The team sighed in relief after seeing the snake lie completely still, with its guts spilling out.

Mark walked up to Emma and asked. "Raid leader, do you mind if I keep this?" he pointed to the floating eldritch monstrosity.