Taking Down the Psychedelic Jellyfish King

Kirou hadn't even managed to cross five meters before he was greeted by a huge jellyfish tentacle rushing towards him with deadly intent. Just as the tentacle was about to slam into his body, Kirou used the force of a charged shot from his gunblade tonfa to narrowly dodge it by pushing him to the right of the tentacle. This resulted in him narrowly dodging the attack but sustaining slight damage from the dregs of stones that flew up from the crash site of the tentacle.

Slightly shocked, Kirou made sure to keep his guard up while rushing to the main body of the giant jellyfish. That earlier attack gave him an estimate on the strength of the monster and now he only needed to confirm it with his eyes.

The giant jellyfish was angry at the fact that Kirou had dodged its tentacle. While staring at the young werewolf, the jellyfish attacked with two more tentacles while simultaneously ordering the Stone Axe Minotaur through its newly established mind link to attack Kirou as well. It was only after it did so, however, that it noticed that the minotaur couldn't move as it was currently being blocked by a somewhat smaller minotaur wearing carapace armor with a carapace shield in its hands. This angered the giant jellyfish even further.

Kirou watched as the two huge tentacles were heading his way without even a change in expression and just as they were about to hit him, Kirou once again made use of his tonfa to narrowly dodge each strike, suffering only small damage figures from the stones that flew up from the missed hits. It was only when Kirou made it into the seven-meter range that he was finally able to see the jellyfish's stats.

Monster: Psychedelic Jellyfish King (Boss)

Monster Level: 20

Health: 180,630/220,000

Attack: 400

Defense: 30

Condition: Injured (Poisoned)

Skills: Mind Control (High), Tentacle Slam, Constrict, Water Barrage (In water), Devour, Berserk

Looking at the Psychedelic jellyfish king's stats, Kirou could only shake his head while looking under the skills section. Because Kirou had to get within seven meters of the monster to see its stats, it's no wonder why Mistake Fox had gotten his minotaur stolen from him. It seems that without prior knowledge, it was impossible to avoid someone falling under the control of that creature. The only saving grace for Mistaken Fox is that he allowed his minotaur to approach first and had it get its mind taken over as opposed to him suffering from said effects himself.

Now that Kirou could see the creature's stats and skills, Kirou opted to deal ranged fire as opposed to getting up close and personal. Those constrict and water barrage skills don't look like things that Kirou would like to try his luck with so he kept his distance from the water as much as possible.

The jellyfish king was quite angry at the fact that not only was Kirou launching those annoying attacks on it, but he was also smart enough to stay away from the underground lake's edge so it couldn't slap him with a <Constrict> and <Water Barrage> on him accurately. This prompted the jellyfish king to focus solely on Kirou, unleashing all fifteen of its tentacles at him while ignoring the fight between the two minotaurs.

Noticing this, Kirou started to run along the side of the lake, in the opposite direction of the fight between the two minotaurs. The angry jellyfish king was blinded by its rage at Kirou and followed closely behind with its attacks, completely oblivious to the player hidden under <Stealth> that was closeby to the minotaur fight.

While the jellyfish king was solely focusing its attacks on Kirou, Mistaken Fox got close to the Stone Axe Minotaur and started chanting some words in an unknown language. This prompted the Stone Axe Minotaur to pause in its actions, receiving a <Shield Bash> from the smaller minotaur and was now laying on the floor, unresponsive. Tank had its eyes glued to the fallen minotaur, waiting for it to make any form of movement for it to renew its attacks once again. The fallen minotaur never got the chance to suffer as it soon turned into a mass of light that turned into a medallion and floated over to Mistaken Fox.

<Fatal>

[-15000]

A huge damage figure appeared after the minotaur was turned back into a medallion. While the jellyfish king was slamming its tentacles at Kirou, it suddenly paused all movement before releasing a painful screech throughout the entire underground cavern, followed by the creature falling limp as all fifteen tentacles were now laying down on the floor over the cavern. Unlike Mistaken Fox currently looking at the downed jellyfish king in surprise, Kirou ordered Tank to start attacking the tentacles closest to it while he himself took out a few knives and started stabbing nearby tentacles as well.

The reason for this reaction from the jellyfish king stems from its skill <Mind Control>. That skill allows the user to form a connection with the mind of a weaker creature while simultaneously taking over said creature's thoughts and actions. With this link, if the user dies, the weaker creature would die as well after being hit with the backlash. As for the other way around, the user would also suffer from a backlash as well, but it won't be as severe since the user could either cut their link with the weaker creature quickly and face little to no backlash or take the full brunt of it while being unaware and end up in a momentary coma. With Mistaken Fox forcefully returning the minotaur to its medallion form, it severed the connection between both servant and master it had with the jellyfish king. With how angry the creature was at Kirou and with the minotaur not in its direct sight, the Psychedelic jellyfish king took the latter punishment as opposed to the former.

Naturally, Kirou did not know how the skill works, nor any idea why this happened. His reason for taking advantage of this moment was pretty simple; the enemy has exposed itself to him and Kirou was not so generous as to wait until the creature was fully recovered. Kirou would rather cut first and ask questions much later as long as it got his job done that much quicker in this instance.

Mistaken Fox eventually awoke from his stupor and he too joined in on attacking the helpless creature trapped in a coma at the moment. The trio continued this for five minutes before the jellyfish king finally woke up. They had managed to shave off just over sixty thousand from the jellyfish king's health and were now faced with an unstable jellyfish king at less than 50% health.

The jellyfish king had possessed some injuries before the fight even begun, as evidenced by the help Kirou saw at the start, along with its condition at the time. Now that Kirou and his squad had managed to damage it through severing the connection between it and the Stone Axe Minotaur, along with the damage it suffered from the trio while it was comatose, the jellyfish king was no longer displaying any anger but was instead attacking in a calm and calculative manner. It's as if the creature had already come to terms that it would die via the poison since the trio had weakened it enough so it was now trying to take them down with it.

Just like what happened with Mistaken Fox, the jellyfish king used its <Mind Control> skill on Kirou's minotaur, Tank. The only problem was that not only had the skill failed, but the jellyfish king also suffered from another hit from backlash.

<Critical>

[-1500]

The only good side to this for the creature was that it wasn't as strong of a backlash as the previous time. After the creature failed, it stared at Kirou in both shock and dread. The reason for this stems from the fact that when it tried to take control of Tank, the connection was immediately severed just as it tried to begin the link. Not only that, but it also received memories of how Kirou had subdued the minotaur before, which created this defense in the minotaur's mind from the jellyfish king's mind control ability.

Now that it discovered the dangers of trying to take control of Kirou's minotaur, the jellyfish king resorted to using its <Tentacle Slam> to attack the trio. Kirou and Mistaken Fox were barely able to dodge the attacks while Tank just held its carapace shield high and tanked all the tentacles that went after it. This kept up for a few moments before the jellyfish king managed to relieve Tank of its carapace shield, which was then tossed towards its main body and used the <Devour> skill to swallow the shield whole.

<Heal>

[+2000]

Kirou saw the green figure that appeared above the boss's head, which prompted him to narrow his eyes slightly. He then turned towards the now empty-handed Tank dodging and striking back at the jellyfish king's tentacles mid-dodge. Kirou deliberated for a moment before creating two shadow clones to join the fight.

Now that the number of targets had doubled before its eyes, the jellyfish king did something it hadn't been doing early; it retracted all fifteen of its tentacles and slammed them in the water around it, prompting the water to rise above its head. Following this, a barrage of water bullets started flying at the now five-man party. Kirou and his clones somehow managed to avoid most of it while Tank suffered many hits here and there. Tank's saving grace was the fact that it was covered in carapace armor from head to toe and the water bullets couldn't penetrate it. As for Mistaken Fox, in a stroke of luck, he just tripped while trying to flee and the barrage of water bullets passed him by.

Now that the barrage of water bullets had come to an end, Kirou and his clones all got up and started rushing towards the jellyfish king from three separate directions. While that <Water Barrage> was quite powerful, Kirou noticed that it was only limited to the direction that the jellyfish king was facing. As for Tank and Mistaken Fox, they followed behind one clone each, leaving Kirou to cover one side alone. Whether this was a conscious decision on their part, neither would be able to answer.

The jellyfish king focused its attention on Kirou while it randomly used its <Tentacle Slam> to keep the other two groups at bay. Kirou, for his part, put away his knives and had his hands occupied solely with the gunblade tonfa. After getting himself ready, Kirou once again made a mad dash towards the jellyfish king, which prompted it to focus eleven of its tentacles in his direction alone while leaving two each for the others.

Kirou was forced to face the wrath of eleven tentacles aiming for him alone but his gaze was calm and his heartbeat was unbelievably steady. In the face of all the tentacles about to slam into him, there was no change in Kirou's face as he used a few charged shots from his gunblade tonfa to zigzag his way through the incoming tentacles. From a distance, it looks like a beam of light constantly changing direction as it avoids contact with all eleven tentacles slamming down and rising up in its general direction.

By the end of it, Kirou was now directly before the jellyfish king, running towards its body on the creature's own tentacles. As if offended by this, the jellyfish king retracted all its tentacles and slammed them into the water again, this time the <Water Barrage> is flying upwards to skewer Kirou.

Just as before, Kirou once again uses his tonfa to change his direction and trajectory within the air to dodge the incoming water bullets. This kept up for most of the barrage until the shells in the tonfa ran out and Kirou was forced to take a water bullet to the chest.

[-504]

Kirou was down to a third of his max health with just one hit and he was still within range of the water barrage that was still going strong. Instead of panicking, however, Kirou's heartbeat grew even slower as he instantly swapped out his tonfa for his pair of fighter gloves and a shortsword. Just as the next water bullet was about to hit him, Kirou used a <Void Palm Strike> on the side of the water bullet, prompting Kirou's body to blast away due to the knockback effect he cannot support while in the air.

Kirou used this trick to keep himself safe from most of the water bullets heading his way while sending a few to damage the jellyfish king itself using the <Mana Control- Energy Redirection> skill. As for the other water bullets that he couldn't avoid, Kirou straight up made use of <Eagle Eyes> to find weak points in each water bullet and used his shortsword to attack those areas, turning the water bullets back into harmless water.

By the end of this barrage, Kirou was now falling towards the top of the jellyfish king. The jellyfish king responded to this by having the same eleven tentacles attack Kirou while he's in the air, this time attacking him as one. Faced with the eleven tentacles heading for him, Kirou cracked a small smile before grabbing onto a line of thread 'conveniently' nearby. Following this, Kirou's body was pulled to one of the groups attacking the jellyfish king at the side.

Just before Kirou could land on the ground, another line of thread had appeared before him, which he grabbed and this line promptly dragged his body towards the head of the jellyfish king. With how fast Kirou's body was moving, the jellyfish king still hadn't registered that his eleven tentacles had missed and before its head now had Kirou flying towards it while wearing spiked cleats. Just before Kirou's attack landed, he used the active ability for <Eagle Eyes>. Not only did the skill activate, it just so happened to have placed its marker at the exact spot Kirou's foot was to land. At this, Kirou could only form a feral smile on his face as his attack proceeded to land on the jellyfish king's head.

What happened next stunned everyone, Tank and the jellyfish king itself. Just as Kirou's spike-heeled kick landed on the jellyfish king's head, a blood-red damage figure in bold appeared above the creature's head, before the creature itself collapsed a full five seconds later.

<FATAL>

[-40,608]

[-1269]

[-1269]

...

As Kirou landed on the stilled and floating corpse of the jellyfish king, Kirou's feral grin changed to that of shock as he looked at the corpse beneath him. Apparently, even he never expected such an ending for this fight. He quickly brought up the battle logs for the fight that just ended as Kirou's clones, Tank and Mistaken Fox looked at Kirou as if he was a monster.

It was only after he went over the entire log a few times did he notice what happened. The clones and Tank managed to sober up after a bit since it had something to do with their creator/owner but Mistaken Fox looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown from what he was seeing.

Kirou could only form a wry smile on his face as he explained to Mistaken Fox just what happened at the end. With the two teams dealing steady damage to the jellyfish king's health and Kirou's crazy attacks while dodging the tentacles in the air, the jellyfish king's health had already been dropped to just under thirty thousand. As for the final attack, that was a combination of Kirou's base attack, <Eagle Stomp> and <Tremor>,<Mana Control- Redirection>, and finally <Eagle Eye>.

Looking over the damage calculation, even Kirou himself was shocked. He never expected that he would have triggered all of those skills at their max values and killed a boss monster without even allowing it to enter its berserk state. Kirou could only shake his head while staring at the now spooked Mistaken Fox.

"Let's just take care of this thing and get out of here. There are a few things I wanna talk about with you, Brother Fox." Kirou eventually released a sigh before taking out his tools and started dissecting the jellyfish king after saying this.

Mistaken Fox could only release a sigh as well before going back to the solid cavern floor before saying, "Sure, I don't mind. It seems that I won't be able to help you out anytime soon after all."

"Don't say that. I think you've just found what I've been searching for all day." Kirou said this with a peculiar smile on his face as he was removing parts of the jellyfish king's body and stuffing it into his almost full inventory.

"Oh? And what's that, Brother Kirou?" asked Mistaken Fox out of curiosity.

"Nothing big. Just a secret base that I can set up for myself."