The Territory Boss Pt6

After the first time I really started tearing into his HP, the lich lord had started talking less and less but I kept up the conversation alone. My hopes were to literally annoy him to death as revenge for triggering my insecurities. Actually killing him would be the only hard part.

Even now he remained silent after being sent down to the ground in a partial crouch to leave several feet of deep skid marks along the ground. Denying the fact that I was getting tired was not even working for lying to myself at this point, leaving me with no choice but to give up my flight. To conserve on what little energy I had left, I shrank my wings down to half their current size while slowly landing.

I had to at least look like the fight was effortless.

"You're good," I commend him while calmly reaching into my belt in plain sight, withdrawing three small potion bottles for different regens. "This is the longest anyone has managed to last against me for a long, long time."

Instead of bothering with drinking the potions, I simply devoured them through corrupting my body to show off there were still tricks that I had yet to use. Throughout this process, the lich lord simply stood there and stared at me with an up and poised weapons and blazing eyes that never wavered. I could not help but ask, "What? Don't want to talk to me anymore?"

The flames in the lich lord's eyes flared up bigger than ever and almost seemed to darken to a light shade of gray, preceding his sudden rush and downward slash of his sword. Holding up Hauntings at a slight angle, I parry the strike off to the side and perform a simple spin into a sideways slash. Stepping back and then forward to evade and return with a rising knee, Trollbone exclaims, "You're still a thousand years too young to talk down to be, boy!"

Turning sideways with a slight back step to dodge the giant skeletal knee that breezes by an inch away from my face, I spin around into a backhand slash that catches the back of their ankle and throws his leg forward. Narrowly avoiding being forced into a kneel, Trollbone drops into a low spinning slash of his own.

However, I was less than half of the lich lord's size in my normal body and thus only had to lean to the side and bend my knees to sink inches below his sword. In return, I leaped straight up and raise my head into a jumping headbutt that rams up into their chin and sends the giant skeleton back up into a standing position.

"A thousand years?" I ask as the skeleton recovers their balance with half a step back before unceremoniously slamming their sword down at me. Stepping to the side with ease and hopping up into a midair 360 Edge, I send their sword swinging wide to the side before performing a Flying Guillotine straight into his chest. "Big words for someone less than three hundred years old."

Lunging forward to once again close the distance as the lich lord staggers several large steps back, I flap my shrunken wings to double my speed forward along the ground before kicking off of the ground right in front of the giant skeleton. Rising up his body with my sword held low, I slash up his ribs and chest once again before performing a Flying Guillotine once again that smashes into the underside of his chin and almost throws him straight down on his back.

Flapping again to throw myself down on Trollbone's chest with a heavy stomp, I just raise my sword to start chopping about his head and face when a giant bone arm suddenly sweeps by and sends me flying. Using shortened wings to catch myself in the air was harder than with full flight wings, but I eventually managed to right myself and glide quickly to the ground. Only for Lich Lord Trollbone to once again appear with a broad sweep of his sword.

Placing Hauntings vertically between us, I hop up lightly to take the strike about my lower body and feel myself rolling over the broad side of his black crystalline sword after connecting with the bottom of my own. Landing easily on my feet behind the swing of the sword despite a loss of ten percent HP on top of the previous twenty, I leap up into a heavy Slash Geist.

Lich Lord Trollbone could only raise his arms over his chest to block the attack, finding himself bending at the knees while behind shoved back nearly ten yards along the ground. Just as he was getting back to his feet I flapped over once again, unleashing a barrage of basic elemental spells from my sword that struck all about his body. Under the blinding cover of the myriad explosions, I whip down and around behind the skeleton to chop down into the back of his knee.

Unable to resist the force of my strike, Trollbone was finally forced into a kneel while still recovering from the mass of frontal spells. "This is more like it!" I exclaim exuberantly, feeling a new rush of vigor flooding me after achieving such a success.

Flashing away and back to his feet twenty yards away, the lich lord comes out of his flash only to find me trailing right behind with a Quick Step and flap of my wings. Meeting Trollbone on relatively equal footing, I leap up into a savage thrust of Hauntings that actually manages to bite several inches into his giant sternum. Leaning below my sword with a snap of my waist, I stomp both feet into the bottom edge of their sternum to dislodge myself safely while falling out of reach of their slashing sword.

"Do you have any idea how long we've been fighting?" I stop and ask after landing in a short skid still within reach of the giant skeleton's sword. Not even waiting for his reply, I leap forward and deplete my MP in a combined Force Strike and Spirit Eruption around my fist while crying out, "Long enough!"

Even though the lich lord managed to block my super-charged fist with the flat of his sword just before my fist could connect with his sternum, the release of over two thousand MP was still enough to send them flying fifty yards away to hit the ground with a bounce and several rolls.

Covering most of the distance with the remaining Flash Step of my second ring, I flap-lunge the rest of the way to the lich lord while he climbs to his feet and perform a 360 Wind Geist for the compounding knockback effects. Not only did my blade meet bone but the ensuing slashes of phantom strikes and the three-sixty aura of scything wind sent Trollbone rolling another twenty yards away.

Simply walking while using Corruption to once again replace my Flash Step ring with another ancient electrum band from my belt's character inventory access before flashing forty-five yards forward. Less than a hundred yards from Trollbone marched over six hundred collective players.

I simply picked a spot fifty yards from Trollbone as he finally collected himself from the ground with roughly ten percent of his actual health bar finally empties out. We had been fighting for around five minutes considering when I first used Spirit Eruption and how long it took to cool. Five minutes of narrow deaths was only worth ten percent of its life.

Out of ten thousand 'percent' I had only taken a thousand. I had no way of knowing what the hell his health even was, but it took a 360 compound skill to take at least ten percent in one attack which put him around the same level as the Troll Commander in terms of defenses. That guy had been decked out in serious armor, too, while this guy was a naked skeleton.

One hundred times the health of the commander sounded like a fair estimate, but there were still some differences such as general stats and skills. What the hell was that Flash Step skill that he could use endlessly? I wanted it, but that probably was not going to happen any time soon.

"At any time, I could have crushed you like the ant you are," Trollbone's voice says darkly in my mind as he raises his weapon in both hands at chest height and poised for a thrust. "What difference do you really think the rest of the ants will make?"

"The first time you were swept off your feet was by the rest of the ants," I remind him solemnly as my friends leading the hundred of players grow ever closer. "That was without me. You're about to fight all the ants at once, old man. I'll ask again. Take it back."

"Why would I take it back at the very end?" He asks simply and begins slowly lowering his stance into a half crouch. "Now that you are all together, you should be even more willing to let things go."

After those words ended in my mind the lich lord's crystalline sword began burning with gaseous black flames similar to his own body and his ranged attacks. Once his sword began burning, the seemingly infinite darkness burning around his body actually seemed to thicken to the point where all that was visible were a pair twin light gray flames.

At first I thought it might be a kind of berserk mode but after watching the aesthetics change be triggered by the sword I decided differently. "It'll take lot more than just one big one," letting go of Hauntings with one hand reach through my masks and Whistle. "Let me introduce just a few of my people, I'm sure you need a moment to finish charging up anyway."

The first to arrive after my magic whistle were my available familiars. Cweeper was the technical second to arrive less than a second after my Whistle sounded, riding on the black ruby hornet who was the technical first despite being a mount. Less than a second behind them were Hermes riding Fluffy.

"The charming and powerful looking figures on my familiars are my familiars, Cweeper and Hermes," I inform the skeleton who had shifted his stance forward in preparation for his attack that was long since charged. "Under them are the Imperial Black Ruby Corruption Carrier and the Infected Arctic Alpha. Coming up behind all of them are the dozens of creatures I made into Infected variants. I only need me to stop your attack one time. Each of them can do much better than I can."

"I see," is Trollbone's reply just before he made his move. Rather, he vanished from sight and almost in the same fraction of a second his overbearing presence appeared well behind me. Like an idiot.

"STONEWALL," I shout out with mana enhancing my volume, praying her can somehow make this work with his armor and unique tank class.

Turning around as the entire world suddenly turns dark I find that Lich Lord Trollbone had become something like a small black hole just a few dozen yards ahead and in motion. The world around him was warped and twisted while all light in the entire battle field seemed to be suck toward him.

From his poised thrusting stance he seemed to bluff at the very beginning, shifting his body sideways into a swift spinning slash. In the wake of his soul bone sword spread a dark light as thin as paper and as fast as as a flash as it seemed to slip in and out of space and sight. One second, all I saw was the split-second formation of the ultimate skill and then the dark light disappeared.

In the brief split second following this, I could see a lone giant figure running forward. I easily recognized Stonewall in the next split second when the skill reappeared but also realized he was without his shield. He was a divine shield guardian class, where the fuck was his shield?!

Without a shield, Stonewall performed the most ridiculous maneuver I had ever seen. From very nearly the exact center of the dark light crescent, Stonewall threw himself forward into a headbutt just as the skill appeared before him.

Somehow, against all odds, the dark light simply shattered and dispersed into a cloud of darkness. Sadly, Stonewall was sent flipping wildly back to the front lines were several dozen people were knocked around like bowling pins by his immense body. However, the health bar I could just barely see never disappeared.

Only then did I remember that his class anointment had been mostly based around his original divine set of armor's abilities and his shield. The armor granted him a small invulnerability to critical hits. Head shots were usually crits and that was a space oriented attack, he canceled the it with a sacrificial divine skill! And here I was being called a masochist on the forums, this dude just took a ninety-nine-percent hit almost with his face.

During the brief moment of shock after his attack was canceled by somebody I did not introduce to him, Trollbone simply stood there with the point of his sword actually resting on the ground. I could tell he was shocked, too, because his sword had never willingly touched the ground unless I had used a knockback skill.

Regardless of how it happened I had achieved the result I hoped for, the lich lord had turned his back to me and I was not alone! "Full Divine Slash," I say softly to my nearby familiars who immediately leap from their mounts. Even in the air they were casting their attacks, depleting all of their mana into the golden and glowing ultimate attacks that they had taught themselves.

Both golden waves of cutting light overlapped at the ends as they spread out, forming a doubled centerpiece that was right in line with the giant skeleton. He whipped around at the last second and raised his sword but to little avail. The attack was made up of a higher form of spiritual energy and ignored defenses with an insane amount of true and compounding damages.

The overlapping slashes swept through him and for a brief moment stripped away and dispersed the dense cloud of darkness produced from his body. Left exposed in the naked light as nothing more than a coal black skeleton that towered over us, the lich lord suddenly looked pretty weak. Especially after a one-thousand-percent chunk of his health vanished for a total of ten percent of the bar.

That doubled up ultimate attack was equal to all of my efforts up til now, playing on the weakness of all undead.

"Come, Corrupt us," I say to the corruption carrier that had been left alone ten feet above the ground. "Let's show this boss a new form so he gets a new perspective."

The black ruby hornet descended in and instant, Wrapping its numerous legs about my torso and waist from under my arms. Using its own Corruption abilities, it began eating the outer layer of defenses protecting my body while melding itself to me form in its place. Parting and distorting its own head into an outer helmet that frames itself about Melpomene's mask, the corruption carrier begins darkening even further from its pooled blood color to solid black as its body became denser.

Hovering up ten feet in the air using the corruption carrier's power under my influence, I drift forward lazily Cweeper and Hermes close the distance on the grounded and dazed boss who probably just received the biggest shock of his… un-life. Between the two of them using shared skill combinations of 360 Edge and Flying Guillotine, the Lich Lord was rudely brought to by being tossed back and forth by the much stronger attacks of my familiars.

In the few seconds that they toyed with the boss before Trollbone finally disappeared, several hundred percent of health was brutally taken away.

*